


Vincit qui se vincit

by tumbleweed (zel), zel



Category: Fallout - Fandom, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Adventure, Caesar's Legion, Drama, Enclave, F/M, Gen, M/M, NCR, Revenge, Western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-15
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 68,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zel/pseuds/tumbleweed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zel/pseuds/zel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The courier was a good man, inoffensive, who limped and shuffled from town to town, drawing letters or packages out of his long pockets, bringing well-wishes and gifts, news and postcards. He shook hands, kissed babies, and told wild stories about places he'd been to. It was easy to travel with him, an easy pace, sleeping under the stars or eating hot plates on kindly strangers' porches. He always said softly he didn't want trouble. He never wanted any trouble. At first they all figured him for a kindly older gentleman, some poor cripple who might have been a veteran.</p><p>But when the gang recovers two stealth devices from the nightkin, the courier cooks up one wild scheme after another to rescue NCR soldiers and bring justice to Vegas fiends. What started as running deliveries soon spirals into bounty hunting, with a mix of superior technology and ideas crazy enough to work. Boone goes from the bodyguard of a rag-tag wandering outfit to a wasteland enforcer, losing his grip on reality under the influence of the Stealth Boy, and troubled by nightmares of the dead, the courier must confront at last the secrets of his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The courier hefted a huge severed arm in both hands, grunted, and then dropped the damn thing like a chunk of firewood. Right in front of Arcade's face.

"Well now, Arcade Gannon, what do you think about that?" he asked in his curious and friendly tone.

Arcade leaned back, blinking. He'd been trying to nap in the shade of a corrugated metal lean-to. He'd been up all night with one of Novac's newest mothers, a sick baby crying into his shoulder.

"Oh, for me, you shouldn't have."

"Think it could still work?" The courier pushed it even closer with the worn-out toe of his left boot. "Then we'd have two."

Arcade's hand patted around for his glasses, and he knocked them over by accident. His brain thought they were on the crate by his cot, but he wasn't back in the Old Mormon Fort, hadn't been for a little while. "Then you could wear one on each arm to accessorize, couldn't you?"

"Well, that would be tacky," laughed the courier, jovial as always. Like some kind of dusty Santa Claus. It was the bushy beard and mustaches, and that wild mass of dusty hair that his cowboy hat barely kept a lid on. The bent back, the way he shuffled and limped when he walked. The gray eyes that watched you. How old was he really.

Before the incredible episode with the stealth field, Nelson, and the showdown at Cottonwood Cove-- Arcade Gannon thought he knew.

The courier's dirty-nailed fingers placed the glasses frames in his hands, and when Arcade could blink clearly.. yes, a super mutant arm, the right one, severed two inches above the elbow.

"Yes, that's a Stealth Boy, like the other one.. looks less damaged, though. In stand-by mode, you can tell by the little tick on the dial. It'll drain out that way."

The courier's bushy bearded face arranged into confusion, then caution. "And then what happens?" he said. The Pip-Boy was as much technology as he dared to use, and even that was new to him. He'd fired two rounds into a cactus the time he accidentally discovered it could play the radio. God have mercy.

Since that whole rocket episode, Manny's sister had blown into Novac with her scrawny husband and all her pointy little urchins. Right now the tribal children were standing up from their game of Scorpion Gladiator; their mohawked and spiky-haired heads were riveted in Arcade and the courier's direction.

"I don't know.. I guess they recharge." Arcade sat up, sighed. No way to go back to his nap now.

"They make you crazy as a shithouse rat," Boone said as he and Veronica wandered up.

"And invisible and shithouse crazy just isn't the way to go through life, my friends," Veronica said.

"Oh, I don't know about that," the courier said. "Can't you entertain the possibilities?" When he smiled, Arcade couldn't be annoyed-- he was harmless, really, like an eccentric uncle. The good kind, who didn't breathe fumes in Arcade's face as he swore, over the point of a knife, that the duty of the last true Americans was to cleanse the mainland from the mutant corruption. Not that kind at all. The courier was a good man, inoffensive, who limped and shuffled from town to town, drawing letters or packages out of his long pockets, bringing well-wishes and gifts, news and postcards. He shook hands, kissed babies, and told wild stories about places he'd been to. It was easy to travel with him, an easy pace, sleeping under the stars or eating hot plates on kindly strangers' porches. The courier had some notion to find the man who tried to kill him, but only to find what became of his delivery.. he always said softly he didn't want trouble. He never wanted trouble.

'The thing about being a courier,' he told them one time, maybe more than one time.. it was something Arcade would remember when it was too late. 'The thing about being a courier is you can give people what they want most.'

...

Veronica grinned. "Uh oh, here they come," she said.

The children-- mostly Manny's sister's-- gathered around to marvel at the mutant arm, poking at the mortifying flesh with a stick.

"Look if you want, but don't get too close," Boone told them. "That's dirty."

The one with the pokiest mohawk and spikes, we'll call him Pointy Vargas, crouched nearby to study the arm with intensity.

Boone watched like a wolf watches a cub.

Veronica wrinkled her nose exaggerratedly, and then winked at one of the kids. "Ew, it's as big as you are, isn't it?"

"And just as smelly," one of the siblings said, sparking off a half-hearted round of shut up/no you shut up. Their attention was absorbed in that nasty purple arm. Flies were coming.

Little Pointy had his hands on his knees. Then he put his palm on the ground, leaned. Then hands on his knees again. He was thinking it through.

The thing to watch now, Arcade realized, was the subtle shift in the way Boone stood. This was going to get good.

Then, just as the hand of the Vargas child hovered over the mutant's hand, Boone reached out and grabbed him on the shoulder.

What a scream. And when he screamed, all the other children screamed too. The courier gave a comical, over-exaggerrated yell with flailing arms and flappy coat that turned it all into laughter and giggles.

Veronica faced Arcade, mouth open, her eyes crinkled up with hilarity. "Hoo boy, I think a little pee came out."

Boone kept his hand on the boy's shoulder a moment, gave him a reassuring squeeze. "That's dirty, make you sick," he said.

It turned out that Manny's sister wanted to cook the arm, when she caught wind of the courier's find. She was a tough, stout tribal woman who walked like Dinky would walk. Arcade wondered how she had generated so many offspring with her husband, who weighed a splinter tenth of her preponderance.. 'Do it like frogs, maybe,' the courier had leaned in to tell him once, the crazy dirty old man, who laughed happily at all of his own jokes. 'You just let it out I guess-- God bless.'

Boone didn't like the idea, cooking that nasty arm. You can't eat that, he said. Feed that to those kids.

He was in Sgt Boone mode now but Manny's sister had known him all her life, wasn't impressed by skinny Craig, Miss Boone's little boy... a story for another time.

All the while, the courier was trying to figure out a way to get the Stealth Boy off of there. The arm kept flipping and rolling up, smacking him at one point, to the laughter of the children. The courier made a big show of being offended and Why-I-Oughtta smacking it back.

Arcade said they should just burn it, really.

Manny's sister looked at them like they were stupid, and contended that they could burn it, and then eat it.

It turned out a moot point in the end.

"Oh, what did you do?" Veronica laughed. "Now look."

The huge mutant arm had vanished. Poof! Gone.

"I guess my hand slipped." The courier rubbed his hat and then smiled, shrugged. He liked to take it easy. "But now we know the Stealth Boy still works."

"Oh, beautiful," Arcade sighed.

"Cheer up," the courier said. "I expect it'll turn up somewhere soon."

...

That night, around the cookfire, Manny Vargas lit a flashlight beam underneath his chin. "Gather round and hear a story of betrayal and revenge," he whispered. "The story of.. THE CRAWLING ARM."

...

The evening had gone by in rare form. A central bonfire, a community barbecue, everyone talking and laughing, telling stories. The kids clambered over everything, over everyone, before their energetic hoopla subsided to sleepy nudges and hugs. Half of them on Boone, who said nothing, only listened. One of the mohawked boys made himself comfortable, fast asleep with a fist in Boone's shirt. The sniper patted his back slowly and listened to the courier tell about this one time in Mexico.

Veronica and Manny flirted shamelessly with one another, Manny Vargas with his gentle voice and warm chocolate eyes, the casual way he would touch you when he talked. Chris Haversham scowled a bit, but he was getting better at integrating with the townsfolk. Daisy Whitman and the courier talked about places they'd gone and things they'd seen, though Arcade could only hear the courier's half, since the man was two beers drunk and talking in a voice big as Dinky. He spilled half his third, too. His hands shook sometimes. Arcade noticed that the first time he met him. Shaky hands in grubby half-gloves.

ED-E took patrol, and took it seriously.

Someone had hung a hat on that cow skull they brought back from Repconn. The mighty Antler.

Now the fire burned low. Boone helped Manny's sister put the kids to bed, and then went up into the rex's mouth. A comfortable quiet fell over the town and Arcade allowed himself to just live in the moment.

"So, the girl.. I like her," Manny said, after awhile. "Smart. Funny. Cute. And she likes Dinky, that's big. I approve."

"That's always an important basis for a relationship.. does your partner like dinosaurs, and what is their favorite dinosaur?"

Manny let out a smoky chuckle. His long tanned arm fell over Arcade's chest, and Gannon took the cigarette in his fingers.

"Tyrannosaur of course. Bad-ass volcano king. That's how I knew this was the place."

"I'm more a triceratops kind of man, myself."

"So y'know, she's a good arm wrestler, too," the sniper said. "Took me by surprise at first, but three out of five, I could have had her.. "

Even on the floor mattress his long legs went over the side, but it felt grounded, more firm, than the broken bed frame. He took in a lazy smoke, letting the mattress soak his weight. Too many nights on hard ground. The courier could sleep anywhere, anytime, and Boone, too. If Boone could stay asleep long enough.

The thread of conversation came back to him, after a minute or two of curling smoke. "Veronica's not his type, exactly," he said.

"You know, I don't know," Manny said. "I don't know his type, he's so damn shy with them.. but I think a spunky girl like her, I don't know. They like each other enough, you can see that."

"It may be.. but I think ol' Veronica likes the ladies more."

"Son of a bitch. Are you kidding me?" Seeing Gannon shake his head, Manny fell back on the mattress and laughed. He had a free laugh that just bubbled out. Nice to listen to.

"I think Boone's the only, uh, normal one in our outfit."

"Just him and the robot?"

"Just him, that robot's got it bad.

"I saw him tweaking it earlier."

"Boone was trying to see if ED-E would play the radio. But hell.." Arcade popped up an eyebrow and said in his sleaziest tone, "You start playing with a guy's knob and dials, you got a friend for life. "

Manny thumped the mattress with a fist and there was that laugh again, huge and lovely.

"I.. I'm glad Boone's got some friends now," Manny Vargas said softly, when he recovered.

They traded the cigarette back and forth awhile, til it had gone down to nothing. The night was pleasantly cooler, and the mattress was body-warm. Manny was sliding a hand up and down Arcade's back, and Gannon drifted, not knowing whether he wanted to be asleep or awake, warm and content, until the first shot cracked outside.

...

It went quick.

Boone and the eyebot held them off as best they could.

Bullets thudded into meat, stayed. Rays burnt flesh but held no stopping power.

The nightkin smashed through the town's defenses. Too many, a whole troop's worth, each one a wall of shielded thick skin and staggering strength.

Shot after shot peppered them, but Boone couldn't seem to break through. He swung down out of the rex's mouth, hanging by a tooth before he kicked off the side and landed, ready to fire again.

Manny ran out in just his trousers, rifle ready. Arcade too. It was going by so quickly that it was hard to make sense, but he knew there was no way out of this. If they could buy time.. the kids might make it free.

Boone never wavered, never gave up, even when one of the hulking bastards advanced on him. It swatted the rifle away like a toy, and when it did, Boone brought out his knife.

Manny fired. Oh shit. Craig was done. They all were.

When the monster lifted him like a doll, Boone put the blade into his eye.

The monster screamed, squeezed, and then flung Boone away. His body bounced off the second story railing, flipped, and hit two doors down from the courier's open room.

It was the moment that broke the town's resolve. Craig Boone had been as steady and constant a figure as that damn dinosaur, as much a fixture as the rex.

The bonfire had kicked up. Flames and screaming.

The troop leader snorted and roared, stalking around, lashing out at scrambling settlers who ran out of the crossfire. Manny saw it coming, towering, with the fires backlit.

Oh God. Craig. See you on the other side, brother. All your pain be healed..

And then the Voice spoke.

Loud and deep came the voice, from no earthly source that any could see.

WHO DARES DEFY THE WILL OF ANTLER.

...

The nightkin leader froze. Literally froze. His outstretched hand hovered in the air a scant two inches from the end of Manny's rifle.

WHO DARES, bellowed that horrible voice, DEFY THE WILL OF ANTLER.

It was the moment that broke the nightkin troop. The whites of their eyes were showing, their broad backs hunched in with indecision. The stabbed one's rage was subsiding to a keening of pain.

There was a thin acrid smell of fuel in the air, one that Manny would later associate with Chris Haversham and the tin cannisters he brought back from the Repconn facility.

"Mighty.. Mighty Antler," the nightkin leader breathed.

YOU ARE NOT FIT TO SPEAK OUR NAAAAME, came the terrible voice.

Then Manny saw fire, and Novac lit; one of the nightkin shrieked the worst sound you ever heard, its body engulfed in black and yellow flames. It died hard.

The Follower doctor was quick on his feet, taking advantage of the moment to shove people back into motel rooms, get them barricaded up.

Veronica was nowhere to be seen. That eyebot hovered by Boone, its tendrils flexing and unflexing. There was a red light but it stayed its attack.

Manny didn't know what the hell to do, or what the hell was going on, but the nightkin were buying it big.

Now the burned nightkin was a charred heap putting off flames and foul-smelling smoke. Now the ones that Novac had fired against were feeling their wounds at last, the rush of adrenalin and brute rage no longer a bulwark.

The one Boone had shot, in particular, was leaning heavily against some wreckage, its breathing thick and labored.

"Mighty.. Mighty One, Great One," the nightkin leader breathed, its deep voice wavering with terror. "We.. you.. you have returned to us."

WE NEVER LEFT.

There was a shimmering in the air. One of the wounded nightkin took a knee, the first of them to do so. It moaned with the loss of blood.

SO QUICKLY DO YOU ABANDON OUR WAYS.

Fire, something moving in the flame, in the smoke.

SO QUICKLY DO YOU FORGET ALL WE HAVE TAUGHT YOU.

Something struck Manny deep in his heart, in his primordial soul, the fear of the spirits and the unknown.

The nightkin let out a cry. "No, Great One.. no! We will do anything you ask.. please forgive us."

The air shimmered and danced. A shape formed. A man but not a man that Novac knew; but there was something old in it, something terrible, and the nightkin crumpled like frightened children. They went to their knees. They went flat out. That one laid down to die, and did.

The man stood strong, a man who bowed to no other man or to anything else upon the earth. He had a streaming mane of hair, a wild beard, like the Old Gods, dressed in stitched leather with streaks of ash all about his body. His head was the skull of a brahmin, the conduit of Antler, who had led the remnants of the Master's army out of the fires of the apocalypse.

YOU BEHOLD A GOD.

...

"You folks have some trouble in the night?" came the sympathetic voice of Lt. O'Donnell, a tough-faced fellow with an unfortunate skin condition.

"We're good, thanks," Manny Vargas said.

"Sgt Boone all right?" The lieutenant and line of troops peered into Novac, where the legendary Craig Boone took in the morning breeze from the comfort of a stained overstuffed chair. An honest-to-god eyebot hovered nearby, playing a soft jingle.

Vargas wiped his face with a hand, shook his head. "Yeah, yeah. He uh, the doc's got him pumped full of feelgoods, so he's in a great mood right now, he doesn't know what the fuck. He killed two nightkin last night."

The First Recon Murder Machine had a lazy smile on his face and he was arranged in the chair in such a way that it looked like he was watching the bighorners that were milling around the interior of the compound.

When did Novac have..

"They attacked you? So many of them?"

"It uh, it was a misunderstanding. We worked it all out."

It looked like Novac was still working it all out.

The settlers were standing about uncertainly. The kids, though, they were having a great time, a whole mess of tribal-looking kids sitting up on the mutant sheep.

Lt O'Donnell and his troops looked at each other. Somebody shrugged.

The draft of O'Donnell's report would look later look something like: 0200 troop of stealthed nightkin attacked town of Novac; nightkin were confronted by Antler, the Skull God; nightkin believe Antler to be their master and guide; Antler has become the consort to Mother Dragon, locally known as Dinky the Dinosaur; nightkin promised to revere the town as holy ground and have brought bighorner as tribute. 0 dead, 1 injured, 12 toy t-rexes permitted to nightkin troop which has peaceably dispersed.

...

"Two beers and you run around crazy and invisible, setting people on fire, turning into a god.. wow, what a lightweight," Arcade said to the courier, who was ambling around as his usual shuffly self. "It usually takes me a couple hours of hitting the sauce to self-deify." Arcade had come to realize the man wasn't actually fat like he thought; he just wore his pack under that damn tatty coat he never took off.

"How's Boone doing, is he going to be all right?" The big gray eyes looked apprehensive.

"Bruised ribs, maybe cracked.. he'll make it, he's tough. All we can do is make sure he's comfortable."

The courier nodded slowly. His beard looked especially unkempt this morning. There were still streaks of ash in it. "Well, he does look comfortable. I don't think I've seen him smile."

"I don't think I've seen his eyes. Ever. I had this notion that if he removed his sunglasses, he'd have sunglasses underneath. Now look at him, grinning and half cross-eyed."

"Looks like we got ED-E to play music after all."

"Oh, best friends," Arcade trilled in his most sarcastic voice. A defense mechanism. The whole thing was still processing. Registering. "Listen. That was, uh, some quick thinking. We'd all be dead."

"Don't know that," the courier said, shrugged. His shaggy head bowed a bit, and he rubbed his arm slowly. He still wore the Stealth Boy from the night before, a detail that didn't sink in until later. "I just told a little lie, that's all."

"And who does it hurt, really? They wanted a god, you were a god, mutants caught on fire, Boone's hurt but he's okay, the baby Khans think this was the greatest thing ever, the crazy nightkin are all happy and best buds now, they've all got little t-rexes to hug.. "

"Now Novac has a bunch of mutated sheep."

"Yeah, yeah, the mutated sheep." Arcade shrugged. "I got to say, though, I.. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I really didn't.. I didn't know you had that in you."

The courier seemed to hesitate, and then he smiled. There was that wily uncle smile again. "It's what we in the business call a command voice," he said.

"Well I gotta tell you.. a little pee came out."


	2. Chapter 2

The nightkin did not return to Novac, no matter how hard the children wished and hoped.

The courier and his crew stayed another night in town, mostly because of Boone. Then they left. Also because of Boone.

Craig was in unusually high spirits. Super high. The highest Manny had ever seen him. If you forgot the insanity pepper incident, which is what they both agreed to do.

There was a tense moment in the beginning where they feared he might be bleeding on the inside, but that moment passed; he'd lived, revived, and Arcade didn't see any signs of blood swelling beneath the skin.

All the doc could do was make him comfortable. Even Manny sighed in relief, watching Craig's face fall out of its agonized grimace. The injection went in and Boone smoothed out of his knotted-up coil, arms slipping away from his sides. By the time they hauled his near-dead weight down the stairs and arranged him on one of Manny's floor mattresses, the threat of the nightkin no longer demanded his attention. The pain of bruised or broken ribs no longer held him back. He slept the deepest and soundest that his companions had ever seen, old or new.

The next morning, Arcade permitted a second injection, and Boone could barely manage a half-upright position on Manny's sofa. He didn't know or care that he had sustained some kind of injury, though he showed a mild curiosity to the fact that Manny and Arcade were crowding around touching him, trying to look under his shirt. There was this smirk on his face.

By the time Veronica tried to help, lifting his clothes up away from the livid v-shaped bruise that went from kidney to solar plexus, Boone put out clumsy hands to try and lift up her shirt in response.

They put him outside while they dealt with the aftermath. Suited him fine.

He was in a rare good mood. So good, in fact, that he began to sing.

See it wasn't that Craig couldn't sing. It was that he could. He was good. Radio good.

This distressed all of his new friends, and the old. And the NCR patrol who came to figure out what the hell was going on. Good luck, amigos!

Manny was still working on that one himself. Who was this courier anyway?

...

Manny's neices and nephews and various tagalongs made a cautious circle around Boone and his chair out in the courtyard.

His mohawked nephew tucked a stuffed bear underneath Boone's arm, held on to his hand, and peered soulfully at his slack face.

They were all working up the courage to see who could take his sunglasses or look beneath his sunglasses, if there even was anything at all.

Manny's youngest niece, Spotted Fawn, brought up some prickly-poppy flowers and proceeded to festoon the drugged First Recon Murder Machine.

When Manny came up to see what they were doing, Fawn turned to him and smiled with gap teeth. "Boone is dead," she said cheerily.

Manny and Arcade had a heart attack. Almost. No. That robot was still swanning around his head, and he was watching it.

Spotted Fawn had developed a joyful sense of the morbid ever since her and her father's war band had discovered crucified bodies up and down the eastern roads. "Boone is dead," she repeated, relishing, clearly, the look that went across her uncle's face.

"Long live Boone," Arcade said.

...

"So glad she's home," Boone told Manny, later. There was a delirious tremble of relief in his voice, and he had to clutch onto the sofa arm to stay upright. His eyes were dilated in the dim light of Manny's hotel room.

Manny laid a hand on the nape of Boone's neck, gave him a squeeze. "Yeah, me too," he said. His eyes stung.

He thought of some other time, a skinny child with blond hair standing by his mother’s grave. Didn't know much what to do with himself, so he stood awhile, and then he crouched, holding his knees. Manny took him home and all the squabbling children bustled together, eating and laughing, telling stories, nudging their new companion, the boy with downcast eyes who silently cleaned his plate. Manny had cousins his age, he had sisters, but he'd always wanted a brother.

Craig started to talk in a staggering, wild voice, all starts and stops and a deep breath, talking about how they wouldn't fight anymore and she was right anyway and he would do anything, he was so sorry, he was so glad she came home and that was all that mattered, that she was home-- everyone was going to be so surprised-- he knew his breathing was wrong-- it was like a miracle--

The courier's face was ashen as he helped Manny and Arcade lay Boone out on one of the floor mattresses. Manny's room was ground floor, safe, always a welcome haven. The courier was an older guy, Manny thought, paternal. He wasn't sure what to make of the old fellow just yet, but his kindness, quick thinking, and gentle demeanor reminded him of some of the better officers that he had served under. The courier was helping them arrange Boone on the side that wasn't wounded.

The woman Veronica chipped in with a small cushion, getting it underneath Craig's arm. She wiped at wet eyes, rubbed her hands on her dress, and then helped prop open the door to let in fresh air.

Later, when Arcade and the courier had gone out, when she thought no one else could see her, Veronica knelt by the floor mattress and the carefully shaven head of her delirious companion. He smiled, reached for her, and she kissed him back.

Just once, and chastely, but that was about all that Manny could stand to see.

...

It was a rough night for almost everybody. Manny had to pull a double shift; he didn't trust that eyeball robot thing. The courier couldn't sleep, and after awhile, he shuffled his way up to keep Vargas company up in the dinosaur.

Still didn't know what to think of the courier. He looked like a doddering old fella, like some mountain man survivalist, but though he walked with a limp, though his hands tended to shake, his mind was sharp. Quick witted, and intelligent, too. Educated, like Arcade. Shame he wasn't any younger.

"You military?" Manny got to asking him.

The courier's eye twitched. Arcade had mentioned to him to watch for any signs of paranoia, for any changes in his personality. Good luck with that, Manny hardly knew the guy. Did any of them?

But Arcade meant the stealth device he had used. Made all the mutants crazy. The courier seemed fine to him, fine enough, and well, everything was crazy enough already. How would you tell?

"Might have taken a shot or two at some raiders," the courier said.

"Bullshit."

"Militia work.. years ago," the courier replied. He rubbed his face, his beard, his eyes, with just the tips of his grubby fingers in their grubby fingerless gloves. "Not so good now.. but I figure between you, me, and the dinosaur.. "

...

Veronica woke up, stared at the ceiling, and decided it was going to be a good day. Take it from a good angle. She decided to wake up excited.

When she rolled off the sofa, stretched, and went to Boone, she made a show-girly wave of both hands in front of his face. “Do your spurs.. jingle jangle jingle?" she said, hoping to prompt him. Oh Boone, what will you do next? Who knew, really?

"Can't stay here anymore," he whispered.

So they didn't.

...

The courier's hands were ugly. Knotted looking, like dirty roots uncovered by shifting sand. He always wore gloves with the fingers cut out of them. Grubby gloves and grubby hands.

When he talked to you, he waved them around like he controlled them from the elbows, flip-flop flip-flop, and some days it was like he couldn't control them at all. There was an intermittent tremor that came and went, sometimes so badly that he pushed things over or he dropped them. He'd come close to breaking a glass-stoppered bottle from the shipment he delivered to the Old Mormon Fort. Arcade was quicker and caught the medicine before it fell. You would think he was just some poor clumsy old man.

Some poor clumsy old man, but a brave one. At first Arcade thought the poor bastard was just too old to care what happened to him. That's why he wandered around the wasteland, trundling from town to town, carrying news and letters. Sometimes gossip.

He carried a piece for rattlesnakes, and for firing off single shots to scare fiends or coyotes. He didn't want trouble, and for the most part, no one gave a shit about some tatty old mail carrier. And if they did, the sight of a red beret was enough to discourage them.. if they that saw Boone at all.

Arcade wasn't sure what to make of their group in the beginning. He'd met the courier a time or two, first in the Old Mormon Fort and then out in a copse of cylindropuntia, where Arcade had been taking cuttings. Hearing movement he drew out his energy pistol and pointed it at an old man in a beat-up coat with grubby gloved hands held up.

Oh-- just the courier, which turned out fortuitous, since he had just finished his half of their book trade, having stayed up all night beneath a sick yellow lantern to do so. The Heart of Darkness grabbed him and wouldn't let him go, even though he'd had so many duties in the morning, like helping sort out the new shipment of supplies, the vaccination line, assisting in an autopsy..

They talked-- always had much to talk about-- and got wound up again in a conversation that even the constant sun got tired of.

"Well, no, yes and no, don't interrupt," Arcade Gannon pushed up his glasses and said. "Joseph Conrad wasn't writing so much about a place, a physical place, as a state of mind.. the wilderness was in the soul.. the absence of law.. what makes men go mad. It was there with the Europeans going into Africa, it was there with the Romans into Britain.. it was really about Chaos, and Order, this-- this going native." He added, "The real Romans.."

"And the fake ones too."

Arcade Gannon realized the moon was up, they were seated around a campfire by now, and he was cooking up the specimens of _c. fulgida_ that he had collected. Oh, damn it.

Somehow they made it back to the Mormon Fort. Freeside's random gunfire interfered with his thoughts, with the mood that was starting to overtake him. He had been planning awhile to head out and check up on Daisy, somewhere in a town called Novac.

The courier said he had to take a letter out somewhere southeast, so they might travel along as far as that. Anyway, he was almost to the end of Arcade's book and could hand it back to him right there in person.

"Well, all right," Arcade had said. "Where are you taking that message?"

"They said look for a dinosaur," the courier replied. "Can't miss it."

"Well.. if you're looking for a dinosaur, I'd say you missed it by sixty-five million years."

"Better late than never."

...

They turned out to be getting to the same place. There really was a dinosaur, a big t-rex with a handsome gay man in it; it was like Arcade's boyhood dreams smooshed together into one, hurray.

After that, Arcade kept meaning to head back to Freeside, but he never got around to it.

A rare opportunity to get work done was how he justified it, but he really did enjoy his time traveling with the courier and his oddball posse. The courier was a pleasant companion. Very intelligent. Hard to read. He’d been everywhere, done everything. If he wasn't careful, they'd talk for hours, and Arcade couldn't sleep, thinking of things he wanted to say.

Veronica was as curious as he was, picking through the ruins. Helping his research. The courier really didn't seem to know what to make of her at first, or really, at any time. Some of Arcade's most bittersweet memories were some of the nights they shared around the campfire, handing the courier's battered book back and forth, the Collected Works of Shakespeare-- which unfortunately was torn in half. They would read out the parts aloud to entertain themselves. Veronica had the perfect timing and inflection, and she would wave her hand theatrically as she gave forth her lines. The courier could summon forth all sorts of stately voices and the hammiest soliloquys; there were moments where he looked away from the book entire, having committed it to memory.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..

Gannon, for his part, had a great time.

And Boone.. Boone just shook his head and cleaned his rifle.

Boone's mission in life was to kill everythign remotely ill-tempered in a mile radius. Right in the middle of your conversation he would bring the rifle steady to his shoulder, let out a breath, and take a shot. You'd have to wait five or ten minutes to find out what it was. Let the guessing game begin. Is it bigger than a breadbox? Arcade half expected Boone's rifle to crack some night and Sputnik to come flaming down out of the sky. Then again, ED-E bore a startling resemblance..

The courier in particular was taken in by Boone's ability and one morning Arcade found the cackling old man puttering around, putting up targets. Bottles, cans, this-n-that. 'All right, Sgt Boone! Let's see what you got!'

Boone got a lot, as it happened.

And it wasn't that Boone was crazy, or bloodthirsty. He was just Boone. Whatever that was, if any of them even knew. Strangely enough, he was the glue that held them together, and he turned out the most important one of all of them. It would have gone different. It would have gone bad.

At first, Arcade Gannon hadn't known what to make of Boone. Of course the man was physically attractive, but when he looked at Craig Boone, he saw the red beret and the rifles crossed beneath the bear skull. The eyeless black lenses that stared through him. He hadn't felt it so strongly in a while.. the memories of his youth, the escape from NCR, the terror in his mother's voice.

However, Craig Boone had resolved into a reliable companion, with sharp eyes, a strong back, and an unwavering span of attention. At first he thought that he would annoy Boone, that Boone wouldn't understand or care to understand anything he had to say, that Boone would judge him... and Arcade learned that he was the one who had misjudged.

"To be or not to be, that is the question" Arcade had been reciting one night, squinting up from the book as Boone started to lean in toward him, "whether tis nobler in the mind to fucking SHIIIT," he gasped, as Boone drew out his combat knife and stabbed.

The combat knife went into the snake by Arcade's head.

The courier hated snakes, as it turned out-- to put it mildly.

"Don't let me stop you," Boone said, watching the pandemonium as he calmly stripped the snake like a ribbon to toss it into the cook pan. "Are you going to be, or what."

...

"Caravan up ahead.”

The courier let out a whistle. “Boone, I do believe you could see half way to China from here," he said, and Arcade was heartened to hear that at least somebody still knew what China was. Or had been.

Veronica ringed her eyes with her hands. “He's got a fine pair of Boone-oculars."

"That sounds dirty," Arcade said. (“I know, right?" Veronica purred.)

The sniper shook his head. "ED-E saw it," he said, pointing with his chin.

Arcade raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Boone. “Are you saying you understand the robot now?”

The sniper's sunglassed eyes betrayed nothing. He went on, walking point. ED-E beeped and tootled and floated self-importantly after him.

Veronica looked at Arcade with a gawpy smile. With the two points of her fingers, she drew a heart in mid-air.

“Hmm.. I see it on my screen thing, well look at that, " the courier said. He was still learning how to use the Pip Boy, and every minor discovery was a source of excitement.

The courier shuffled along, looking between them, smiling. He looked like an indulgent father presiding over the foolishness of his squabbling progeny. One of the things that Arcade liked about the courier was that he always wanted to see them taken care of, that he always had good ideas.

Two minutes later, they see, hear, and smell the mutated cattle laying in the pitiful shade of thorny mesquite. Caravan hands mill around in the open cavities of a ruined building; no doors or windows, just one side of a brick building destroyed in the blast.

Their leader didn't want to go any farther and used the heat for an excuse. They still had something they needed to take up the road, so it worked out well that a man from the Mojave Express came their way. The courier said he'd make the delivery, and so he took the package with his clumsy hands, like you'd take out a casserole with oven mitts.

Boone said they expected raiders. Why they wanted to turn back. The courier agreed; too few guns, too many cattle.

It was a long walk, long and hot. The package was turning out too much for the courier, who couldn't hold it right to begin with. His grubby gloved hands just couldn't seem to get a grip on anything for very long. He declined help twice, as polite the second as the first, but you could hear the strain in his voice.

Sweat beaded his brow. Dripped off his long nose.

Boone usually walked point but he drifted back a bit, rifle over the crook of his arm. Two fingers brought down his shades just a scant, and he met Arcade’s eyes with a meaningful stare. You better do something about that..

Arcade nodded. Good old Sgt Boone. Faithful as a dog.

Gannon tried to work out the best way to take the package from the courier while leaving his pride intact. Granted, after global thermonuclear war, hurting somebody's feelings might be a little lower on an ordinary man's list of priorities. But Arcade Gannon was no ordinary man!

It was just that he respected the poor old gentleman and well, it would be like taking the first shot away from Boone or a snappy comeback from Veronica. Still, the courier was visibly struggling to carry that package and Arcade knew he needed help but wouldn't ask for it. He never did.

Running some solutions through his mind, and really over-thinking it more than he should, Arcade opted for, "Hey, you know what’s amazing? This energy pistol, go on give it a try" and quick as you please, he swapped out the package and left the courier holding his gun.

But by that time the courier had to hold it in the crook of his arm, like a baby.

Arcade always thought it was arthritis.

...

They came up to a a cluster of farmhouses and mobile homes off the side of the road. Closest to the rocky path ran a fence, and on the fence sat three sunburned men half-watching their group and half-watching the paddock. A mangy dog barked at them a few times.

Inside the main enclosure, a slim cowhand steadily advanced on a five-legged calf, trying to rope it up with a spinning lasso.

The men stared them down a moment, hands drifting toward their hips, not sure what to make of their group. Veronica went ahead, breezing past Boone, the most intimidating of their posse.

"We met a man named Lloyd Trenchert down the way," she said. "He asked us to bring up this delivery, it's for a Miss Hattie Pockets.. what a cute name, huh?"

The men on the fence stared without saying a word. One of them slowly chewed a piece of grass. The dog barked again, and the courier signaled it softly with a sound. The dog’s ears perked and then it went to him right away, wagging, pushing its head into the man’s gloved hands.

People were coming out on the porch of one of the farmhouses, a woman wiping her hands on her apron, and a little girl in a homespun dress.

“I’m with the Mojave Express,” the courier said, patting the dog’s flank as it leaned sideways into him. “How are you all doing today?”

The one man nodded slowly, at long last, and he spat out the stalk of grass. His neck twisted and he hollered, "Miss Hattie, your birthday present come!"

...

"This is Grobbit, and this is Dollicia, and this is Bonita," Hattie Pockets intoned. She arrayed her toys before Arcade Gannon, whom she was bound and determined, from first sight, to marry. "Dollicia is going to have a baby. You have to help cause you're a doctor or else it'll come out with two heads. I saw a baby with two heads, it was a cow baby."

Grobbit the tyrannosaur looked very familiar.

There was a scientific part of Arcade Gannon that began to draft an anthropological thesis on the proliferation of pre-war artifacts from Novac, specifically patterns of trade, but at the moment all he could wonder was how and why he had been abandoned to the whims of a seven year old girl.

...

Mrs. Pockets was a plump woman with soft arms and the first thing she did was treat everyone to trays of hot buttered biscuits that came apart in papery layers when you twisted them with your fingers.

Afterwards, there were pickled vegetables, steamed corn, some kind of potato hash and even fresh beef. Even the gang got generous scraps of it.

"It'll go to waste if we don't eat it all now," Mr. Jim Pockets explained. The man was a dwarf, barely taller than his daughter, dressed in dusty denim. He appeared to be the one with authority over the homestead. "Some raiders came in the night and took pot-shots at our cattle.. mutilated one with a stick of dynamite. We had to put her down."

"Powder Gang," Boone said. Possibly the first words he said that afternoon. "Which way?"

Arcade thought, The Spartans ask not How Many, but Where?

Jim Pockets shrugged and pointed with his corncob pipe. "Over that ways. Don't know, it was dark."

"Well, if you like, we could stay around and give them a scare tonight," the courier said.

Veronica was doing him up a cigarette. His shaky hands couldn't quite get the rolling papers neat and precise.

With that decided, they move on to more topical items, like a little girl's seventh birthday. Hattie Pockets wolfed down her supper, mouth still half-full, when she pleaded, "'m DUD! My mopen dresent nao?"

The awkwardly-shaped and heavy package turned out to contain a set of girl's play items like a miniature stove, iron, plates and pans, and fake food. Partially rusted, and a little dented, but whoever had found it had certainly unearthed a find.

Hattie Pockets screamed with delight.

Up until bedtime, she spent the remainder of the evening cooking fake food for her beloved husband, the handsome Doctor Gannon, and Nurse Veronica, whom he would never forgive for this.

...

That night, on a full belly, bedded down in the straw of the Pockets' hayshed, the courier dreamed. He dreamed of Jackrabbit, after all these years. He was blurred now, a warm long body with tribal ink, but the courier knew the scent of his skin and his hair. There was some clay slurry that he shaped his hair with, spiking it, fitting it into beads and jingly bits and bobs that chimed when he turned his head sharply away from a kiss. He hated that. Hated it all.

A deep pervading sense of pain woke the courier. It persisted, even after minutes breathing slowly in the barn, even after all the years he had worked it over in his heart and mind. He had tried to stop thinking of Jackrabbit, had tried to cut out the rotten edges and let the rest heal, but his will was weak in this, and he could not forget some of the warmest, happiest moments of his life where he wanted nothing more.

Good God.. how far he'd come..

Tattered clothes.. eating scraps from another's plate.. hopeless and crippled in somebody's barn. Not even a good courier. Good God.. if he could have the use of his hands back.. but then that was it, wasn't it?

He swore he almost hear the laughter.. that evil witch cackling..

The dim shape of Craig Boone gave a fractional movement.

ED-E was hovering close to the courier's head, and just behind. You could hear the hum of the servos.

"Is it time?" Boone said.

Get a hold of yourself. Not becoming of you.

"Ready in a minute."

...

They shot two Powder Gangers in the night.

Boone got the first one, a clean shot that entered through the neck and went out the sinus cavity. The other one turned to run and took a tumble, eventually crawling and dying along the cattle fence.

The courier held his glowing gauntlet over the body of the one he felled. Boone probed the bloody patches on the NCRCF uniform and pointed out the exit wounds with his fingers.

"You hit him twice out of that. Way your hands shake.. might hit better if you aim for the torso. More surface area."

He looked up from his crouch, squinting against the Pip-Boy light. Didn't mean it to sound disrespectful. Didn't think the old man would hit him at all, though. Seemed strange enough, the old man drawing on anybody at all. Didn't fit with the image in his mind.

Men came out on the porches of the farmhouses, holding lanterns.

Waiting a moment to hear back from ED-E, the courier called out, "All clear, go back to bed." To Boone, he said, "Thank you, Sgt Boone, let's drag these boys out a ways so Arcade's missus don't have to see them in the morning."

And that's what they did.

...

 _He dreams of the high flat nothing where seventeen hits forty, beautiful and austere with the promise of distant mountains, dry brown grass with the vivid green clusters of sophora._

 _The other courier waits for him by the old train tracks, where the rail used to cut downtown. Some other age, some other time, a time that was true._

 _The other courier waits in the open bay of a derelict train car. He looks bored, like he always did. Nudges a stained box with the toe of his boot. The box is just the right size as he suspected._

 _"Got something for ya," he says. "It's come a long way."_


	3. Chapter 3

They stayed another day around the homestead. Folks showed up from some of the other houses, a man with an eye infection, an old auntie with a growth on her arm, and a young miss who didn't have a damn thing wrong with her.

Word had got around that Gannon was a doctor, and single. Hell you could howl at the moon all you wanted to, wasn't going to bring it down.

Veronica likewise had her share of admirers from the shy young cowpokes hanging back by the fences, their shrewd mothers who invited her in for tea, and the older scruffs who smirked and tried to work out their plan of attack. Sometime mid-morning she slipped away from the scrutiny and joined Boone in the barn they were put up in. The courier told him to go take some rest, and it was drowsy and warm in the hay with the dim light coming through the wooden slats.

She was trying to sneak up on him but he could hear the hush of her step going over the straw. Not to mention the way the door creaked on a rusty hinge when she pulled it back.

"Hey.. You awake?”

Am now. Boone drew his arm off his eyes and squinted as she got low and walked goofy on her knees the rest of the way. She smiled at him and drew a blue kerchief off a handful of biscuits.

“I even put extra pepper on yours," she said, grinning once she saw his interest. “I know you love pepper."

Veronica crawled in next to him and settled the kerchief on some straw. Boone took a biscuit and true enough, it had been buttered and peppered the way he liked. He was about to take a bite when Veronica gave a light pinch on his shirt and pulled it up a ways.

"Don't mess with that," he said.

“I just want to see, hush."

The heavy bruises on his side had gone from blue to purple to green to yellow and then back again, an ugly progression of color that showed little sign of fading. Hurt to lay on that side. Least it didn't hurt so much trying to breathe.

Veronica looked over him in girlish sympathy, and then she carefully drew his shirt back down and looked at him, hands on her thighs. "How bad does it hurt?”

“Nothing you can do about it.”

She studied him a moment with a sad look, and then a smile came over. “Biscuits!"

They ate together in a silence that would last as long as the last crumbs of her share. She was a chatty one and soon as she licked her fingers clean, she scooted in on his good side and smiled at him, like they were going to tuck in like on some cold gritty Mojave night. Then the pepper made her sneeze, on him no less, and then she just sniffed and smiled again.

He squinted at her, and the look on her face became more serious.

"You know your town was so upset when you were hurt.”

"Too bad they didn't give a shit my wife was taken.”

Veronica stilled. Then she put her small hand on his arm. “They didn't know," she said. “At first they thought she just left.. like she went back to the Strip for awhile.”

They’d been fighting--

“Don't see how it's any of your damn business.”

“We're just trying to help.”

"Who's we?”

“All of us, we worry about you. Arcade told Manny about how you followed the legion all by yourself. He had no idea.”

Boone felt a cold anger wash over him. “Gannon had no right.”

“How else was he ever going to understand, if nobody ever knew?"

“No one can understand.”

Veronica stroked her hand up and down his arm. “But we do," she said, in what he moodily thought was her Oh, Boone voice. He tried to steel himself against her. He hadn't been with a woman in a year, but it was more than that, more than anything sexual. Just being touched in a comforting way by a warm friendly little woman. He couldn't let her win.

If they were walking, he'd turn and walk away, but he was laying around in the straw with his bruises. He was tired, and damn it, he was here first. He turned his head away and lay his arm across his eyes again. Conversation over.

But she persisted, and her fingers touched his arm again, just along the underside of his elbow. Damn it being ticklish. He crooked his arm and frowned at her, in no damn mood, but her large dark eyes were soulful. He was a sucker for big liquid dark eyes.

“Bunch of meddling queers," he grunted. Didn't really mean it. Maybe.

Veronica sniffed theatrically, and smiled. "We don't like conflict," she said.

...

They took a message up the way for a man Jim Pockets dealt business with. Something about cattle prices, working out stud fees or something. Despite the shelter of the barn, the fresh water for bathing and drinking, and the endless bounty of papery biscuits, it was time to move on. Gannon was greatly relieved, Boone was sure. The man had treated every ailment that could be treated. Medically.

“Soooo how'd it go with the farm girl?" Veronica gloated the instant they were out of earshot from the waving homesteaders. “The one with the warty thing on her face?”

“I’m surprised they're not shooting at us, frankly," Gannon sighed.

The courier grinned. “Hell, what fella wouldn't want his daughter to marry a handsome doctor?"

“So I’m standing there and she is dragging my hand up her thigh and, stupid me, I really think she's in pain, and--”

Boone smirked, but tried not to. He was still annoyed with Gannon.

Veronica giggled. “Oh, Arcade.”

“And her father comes in with his hat and he's saying, ‘Patsy, you oughta come when your momma calls after you,' and there I am with my hand up her skirt.”

“Ooo, then what?”

“Well I go completely stupid and can't think of anything to say. At the time. I mean now? Now I’m armed to the teeth with killer witticisms, which I won't tell you now because I might yet live to reuse them for another situation. So , Miss Patsy, the delightful young thing, just sort of giggles and my life is flashing before my eyes, and then her father says... ‘Ya know, bet you could burn that wart off with a lighter, she’ll be good as new.’"

Veronica half laughed. “Oh, that’s awful!" she said.

Gannon shook his head. “Next town? You and I are married. That's my story and I’m sticking with it.”

“Oooh, I don't know, they might wonder why we all sleep piled on Boone.”

“He's like a portable furnace? Our marriage is complicated?”

Veronica checked his way with winking eyes, seeing if he'd smile. He didn't.

Boone wondered sometimes how he got to running around with every last queer west of the Colorado. Even a girl queer. Hadn't even thought such a thing existed. Sure he'd drank his share in that one titty bar on the Strip where the girls all played and pretended with one another. But Veronica, this scab-kneed girl who ran around in some scratchy hooded potato sack, she was the real deal.

And even the courier. Maybe most everybody else would miss it, but Boone saw how his eyes followed Gannon. The way he talked on and on with Arcade, like now, as they lazed up the road with ED-E swirling on ahead.

“Never mind. How are you supposed to know what I mean by a Lord of the Flies style ending, if you have never read it?”

“Don't let that stop you telling your story. I’m curious now. What was this thing you found in the desert?”

“The meaning gets lost by the wayside, I’m afraid. Never mind it, I'll start again after you've read it. I don't want to spoil it.”

“Well I’ll just have to swing by the library to check out a copy of this book. It’s not like, you know, everything has gone up in a nuclear fireball and the remainder of written civilization is now ripped out page by page for wiping ass.”

The courier watched him with a peculiar expression. Then a bearded smile. “As it happens, I am in possession of such a book, but the first twenty pages or so got ripped out." He patted the long pockets on his massive coat. “I'll make up the first part so it will make sense to you.”

...

It was dark when they brought their message in.

No waving folks, no curious onlookers, no shelter, no water, no gifts of food.

Lights shone deliberately and directly into their eyes. Boone saw red at the edges, spots flashing and dancing, but he could see the long rifles and grim shapes of a township militia.

“Leave your letter there and go back the way you came," a harsh voice tells them at the point of a gun.

The courier said, mildly, “It looks like you're expecting some trouble. Might be better if we could band together, don't you think?" He was holding one of his grubby hands up to his eye, trying to shield the bright light.

“We don't know you.”

"Well, I’m with the Mojave Express, as I said, and these are my companions--”

“Let me tell you something mister. Two days ago we found some fella hurt on the road. We brought him back here, dug buckshot out of him, gave him a place to sleep safe from harm. To pay us back the bastard raped the boss's daughter. Turned out we helped some god-damned Powder Ganger.”

The beam of light drew away from their eyes and pointed up on a twisty tree some twenty feet away. You could see the bent shape hanging from it, the limp hands and inward-turning boots.

“Now you best get on your way.”

...

Boone found a hollow under a bridge. The ground was crusty but not hard, not too sandy, and though there were probably snakes, it was better than laying out in the open.

No fire tonight. Just the dim glow from the courier’s gauntlet, which Veronica helped him take off and set between them. They ate hard rations mostly in silence.

Boone went through his routine with his hands mostly, his eyes sharp on any threat from the desert. ED-E patrolled like usual. Damn useful thing to have.. the robot could see through the dark and didn't make any light if you didn't want it to. Just that hum, but then, you'd have to know what to listen for. The Follower always teased him about the robot but if he wanted to shut it down, then he could stay up all night in watch.

The gang was quiet. Boone figured they would take out that book again and do their story out loud, but he kept waiting and watching and it looked like they weren't in the mood. Cold shoulder from earlier probably got to them. He'd have thought the courier would brush it off, but he seemed to take it hardest. The old man probably slept out in the open before, eaten hard rations before, hell, but maybe an old man grows accustomed to comforts. Needs it more.

"So much for hospitality," Veronica said.

Gannon spoke up almost immediately. "They're feeling betrayed after helping a stranger. Understandable, but.. honestly, if we've just come from down the road from the other homestead, we're probably okay."

The courier had nothing to say.

"Don't know why they took in a son of a bitch like that," Boone said. “Just put him down right there. Stupid thing to do in the first place. Shouldn't have happened."

"They didn't know who he was."

“He was wearing NCRCF issue work boots.”

“Most people wouldn't know that.”

Boone shrugged. He had nothing more to say. He would just know if someone wasn't to be trusted. You could feel it.

...

Sometime after their pitiful dinner, Arcade shouldered out of his lab coat, pushed up his sleeves, and took the light for a closer look at Boone's bruises. The sniper warned him off with a chilly stare to start out with, but Gannon had traded some supplies back at the homestead and came equipped with some kind of salve. Now they were all going to smell like that sharp tingly medicinal smell.

“You told Manny," he growled softly at one point, at long last, while Arcade smeared his bruises. They began to talk quietly away from Veronica and the courier.

“Someone had to.”

“Not your right to tell.”

Arcade sat back on his heels and they regarded one another. The courier wondered if he should interfere, but it was best to let them sort it out themselves. “No, no it wasn't," he agreed. “But he talks about you all the time. He worries about you. He's your brother.”

"He was glad.” The word came out with such an edge of pain that the courier wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, like he would comfort any of his men. Boone was so young. Hard to remember sometimes. But he was young.

Veronica met his eyes in the dim light. She was silently rolling him up a cigarette with her nimble fingers, a feat he could no longer manage for himself with any dexterity.

“They all thought.. " Arcade trailed off. “Look, Craig, I don't want to stir this all up again for you, but they honestly thought that she was headed back to the Strip. They didn't know she was taken. They didn't know she was pregnant." His voice was firm but gentle. "And it’s not your fault that they didn't know. Sometimes.. it's too hard to tell anyone anything. Where would you even begin?"

The courier thought of that later, as he smoked the cigarette the scribe made for him, and then later, as he lay on gritty ground in the darkness.

Turned out we helped some god-damned Powder Ganger.

Don't know why they took in a son of a bitch like that. Just put him down right there.

Where would you even begin?

...

 _That night he dreamed of the Mormons again, that little cabin made of pine. You could smell the resin. He remembered smells the best. Pine resin, woodsmoke, cooking smells. Supper smells. His brain is mixing up the scent of the salve that Gannon treated Boone with, and his hungry stomach dreams of food. He is cold and dreams of the banded blanket draped over his skinny and hollowed-out body. After what happened he couldn't stop shivering, he couldn't tell sensations very well, he couldn't tell what was real, sometimes he still couldn't after being forced to drink from that bitter bowl._

 _He watches a little girl move a knife and fork across his plate, cutting up his supper for him._

 _He knocks over a cup with his hand. They are both bandaged half to the elbow. The pain is immense and his eyes go wet._

 _The mother cleans the spill and freshens his glass. The father talks to him like nothing has happened, talks to him about the forgiveness, the everlasting mercy of their sad-eyed god. He remembers the Mormons with a depth of shame he cannot begin to express, and in his dream, he confuses them with Doc Mitchell, the good folks of Goodsprings, Sunny Smiles cutting up his supper in the Mormon's pine cabin, Doc Mitchell bringing a glass to his lips, a glass full of blood going down his chin, lots of voices now and lanterns (the smell of dirt) and the young man from the hardware store, young Chet, a shovel waving up over his head and Sunny Smiles "Chet don't you dare, we don't know!" and the robot (Victor) saying Well now, pardner! I cain't let you do that, I’m afraid!_

 _he is so thirsty_

 _I cain't let you do that! Wouldn't be neighborly!_

 _water, please_

 _Hey mister.. are you all right?_


	4. Chapter 4

"Huh, didn't figure they'd send a sniper to take the delivery," said the tinker when they poked into his shop. "You're here for the parts, right?" After reviewing the faces of the courier's gang, in particular the impassive stare of the First Recon man, the tinker said, "Oh, I'm sorry.. I thought you were here to take these radio parts down to Nelson."

It would have gone by just like that, but Veronica chirped, "Oh, well, you're in luck anyway. Mister Chris is a courier."

There was some talk about where the parts needed getting to, some town called Nelson. But the conversation faded out to little importance as Arcade made his discovery.

Like a questing knight after long years of doubt and despair, Arcade gasped at the sight of his own personal grail, or one of them, an old-time holotope. The tinker had heaped it with other scrap and junk on his catchall counter. Like one of the last surviving relics of the Old World meant no more than that.

(Oh Nelson's just down the road a ways, I'd take it myself but the agreement was one of their boys boys would come get it)

Arcade lifted it with both hands as though lifting an infant out of a baptismal font.

The courier whispered, "You'll never get that to work, Arcade Gannon."

"Do you know what this is," Arcade whispered back.

"The most expensive paperweight you'll ever own."

Just then the conversation between Veronica and the tinker broke, and the tinker grinned, said, "Well I've worked with the Mojave Express before, and they always keep their word."

The courier had apparently been paying as much attention as Gannon had. "What's this, friend?" he said.

"He needs somebody to take a shipment of radio parts down to Nelson," Veronica said. She loved to help others. "It's just down the road."

"If it's just down the road.. "

"Oh, good. Just keep walking til you see the bear flag, I guess. NCR outpost."

Even after everything, and even in the hot little store with buzzing flies, Arcade felt a cold twinge of dismay. He didn't really want to blunder into some NCR outpost, no matter how much time had passed, no matter no one knew his upbringing.

"Nelson," the courier replied without a moment's pause, "don't think we're headed that way, friend. Thought you said Nipton."

Veronica gave him an odd look. "Sure we are," she said, "but you're the boss, boss."

"It won't be too out of your way." The tinker shooed at a fly absently, still watching the courier. "Just down the road.. I thought you were.. "

The courier's eyebrows pinched together. "Well, all right, we'll make sure they get their radio put together," he conceded. "How much you want for this piece of junk, by the way?"

...

Arcade Gannon used to fear that you would know his secret just by looking at his face. That there would be something there to give it all away. He was older now. Years had gone by. But every time he saw the desert helmet and goggles, every time he heard the barking voice of an MP on the Strip, Arcade still felt a thrill of fear of the NCR.

The holotape was burning a hole in his lab coat. He almost didn't want it now, like he carried this evidence in the inner pocket just below his heart. He knew this was irrational. There were enough people interested in the Old World and its curiosities.

They just didn't know it like the Enclave had. The last Americans.

Nobody was in much of a talkative mood on the way down the road. Boone hardly said anything anyway in their travels, seen not heard. Arcade trudged along like a sulky child, and if he'd scrutinized the journey then as much as he did now—now with so much time to think-- he would have realized he walked the road with a fellow traveler. The shipment was one the courier had never wanted to take.

At least it wouldn't be too complicated. Hand over the radio parts, maybe use the outpost shower and mess tent, maybe not, maybe just keep on going and find a nice ditch down the way.

It was late afternoon when they came up over the bluff and looked out at the joshua trees, the desert rubble, and the ramshackle buildings grouped below.

The tinker told them to look for the bear flag, but what they found were men crucified in the center of the town.

...

Boone was the first to speak.

"Still moving. Have to get them down."

He took the scope down from his eye and turned to face the courier. "Can't leave 'em like that," he went on, and walked on. The courier heaved a sigh and he followed.

Down the slope they found a pocket of sandbags, a leaning sheet of corrugated metal, and a couple frightened soldiers. They all jumped and scrambled to put weapons on the courier's gang, but on seeing Boone, their relief was palpable.

Only one of the NCR men didn't move, and that was a bearded man with the distinctive hat of an NCR Ranger. He clapped the hat back on his head when he stood up, and he said, "First Recon.. thank God, a real soldier."

"What happened here," Boone said.

"Legion happened, what's it look like?" The ranger shrugged. "The outpost got run out in the early hours this morning.” He pointed with his chin to the cluster of soldiers nearby. "I wasn't here, but it would have gone damn differently if I was. Now the skirts have Nelson and they'll be holed up for weeks."

The ranger's expression changed. A smile that looked sly to Gannon. "But that's where you come in, sergeant. I need you for something."

"I can get the ones outside and by the windows," Boone said. "Then we can move in." He looked over his shoulder at the courier, as though checking with him.

"I like your attitude, sergeant," the ranger said. "I like to see motivation. I guess NCR will take anybody these days, but these right here, they won't lift a finger so long as their buddies are hanging on the cross. Legion knows that. S'why they're up there. It's insurance."

Boone saw where it was going before anyone else. Tense already, he seemed to wind up even tighter, tendons standing out and his face sheet white. You could only see the black lenses of his sunglasses.. but Arcade knew what would show in his eyes.

"In Ranger School we learn things different," the ranger said. "It's like ripping off a bandage.. you have to do it all at once. Your job here sergeant is to put those poor boys out of their misery so we can get on with it all."

"Like hell he is," said the courier. Watching the courier shambling closer to put himself between the two, Arcade thought of an old dog coming to save a kicked puppy. "Now you listen here, Craig is retired and he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want."

"Settle down, you don't know what you're talking about, old fella," the ranger said. "You don't know how the Legion is. Those boys are dead anyway. Just don't know it."

"Craig is retired."

"He's still wearing that beret, isn't he?"

"He earned that." The courier limped off toward the others. "Who's in charge here?"

The soldiers all looked at one other, milled about, and then one pointed to the center cross.

"No one's shooting down any hostages," the courier said when he came limping back. "Those boys can be saved."

"Those boys are dead," the ranger groaned. "The Legion will shoot them the instant they see us coming in. I've seen it done."

"So good to know that the NCR stands up for its own," Arcade told him. "I'd hate to be the one writing home to Mom and Pop telling them I could have saved Jimmy but I was too lazy, I just didn't feel like it. I'd hate to write home to his wife and kids to tell them I had Daddy shot down instead."

"Fuck you, Follower," the ranger said with half a laugh. "So easy for you to judge when you don't take a stand for anything."

"And what does the NCR stand for, if it won't stand for its own men?" The courier put a hand on Boone's shoulder, brief, but enough. "We're going to take back Nelson and I'll tell you how we'll do it. You can come along, ranger, but if you shoot those men.. you'll go with them, I guarantee."

When Ranger Milo found out the fate of the outpost had come down to a beat-up old man, a homeless, meaningless courier who came to deliver radio parts, he just laughed and fanned himself with his hat. "You'll see I was right, sergeant," he said. "You'll wish you'd have shot them down when you're up there on your own."


	5. Chapter 5

Later, he would realize that old Mister Chris couldn't stand by any longer. It would be like Arcade Gannon looking away if someone cried out for a doctor. A sense of guilt and responsibility crept up on him when they looked across to the fallen outpost. He could see it in his eyes, shadowed beneath the tatty brim of his hat.

These men needed a leader, someone to tell them what to do, where to go. Boone hesitated. His palms were slick. Arcade knew he had to be thinking of Carla when the ranger told him to take down the men in his scope.

The ranger showed no interest in sorting out the poor scared boys that survived the attack. Milo just crossed his arms and looked on, half-curious, half-mean, wondering what the shabby old man would do.

The man called Christopher Sly was now standing over a map of Nelson drawn in the sand. Twigs and little pebbles marked out gates, buildings, and other features. Given something to do, something they could control, the three remaining NCR soldiers were busy at work describing the attack, the compound, anything, everything.

The courier wanted to know the gates, and the youngest showed him the two main ways and also a scrape that one of their dogs had dug underneath. His eyes flashed wet when he said, "Scout tried to fight them off, but the Legion brought dogs of their own."

Another soldier snapped that Scout was just a dog, and the lieutenant was up there on a telephone pole.

"I understand, son," the courier said. "A dog's innocent. Show me where this scrape is.. is it enough to get a man through?"

The boy nodded and held his hands apart. "Bout this much. I was gonna fill it in."

The courier filed that away. "I need to know how many are in there."

"Don't know."

"When did they attack you?"

"In the morning, sir." _Sir._

"Dark of the morning?"

Nodding heads.

"Who was awake?"

One raised his hand.

"Did you hear shots first?"

The soldier said he heard Scout barking first, and then the enemy dogs broke through. Shots afterward.

"Then what? What kind of weapons?"

"I guess they had cutting weapons. Machetes, close up."

Nodding heads.

"When they came in with the bladed weapons, was it two of them to one of you, or did you get a chance to fight them off one on one?"

The soldiers talked amongst themselves.

"Did you see their faces?"

Yes, most of them.

"Tell me more about the ones who wore the scarves."

Some kind of sports helmet done up with prairie chicken feathers.

"It sounds like you are describing one of their officers to me. Maybe there is another. Have any of them tried to come after you? Do they know you escaped?"

Boone broke in, "Could go when it's dark. Cut power from the generator."

"A good idea, but no. We'll go as soon as we can. The dogs will see us anyway, and the longer we wait, the more reinforcements could come in. And we need light for you to shoot by."

The courier left Boone in charge to check and clear the soldiers' weapons. He hobbled off to start stripping down out of his long coat and hat. With all that gone, he slid off his heavy pack, and with all that baggage off, you could see how lean he really was. A man who limped from meal to meal.

Arcade shook his head. "We'll get killed. They're too entrenched... and in broad daylight?"

"Don't worry about it," the courier replied-- Arcade felt suddenly like some nagging bitch or something. This irritated him. "Craig and I will go first, and then the rest of you if need be."

"Uh.. if need be. You realize that a decanus basically means ten, right? Their officers? So ten plus ten? Just you and Murder Machine against twenty men? How's that going to work?"

The courier smiled. "We're going to kill the officers first. Then the rest of you can come in."

"Again.. what?"

"I think it's time to give these a whirl."

A raggedy boot gave the stealth-boys a nudge.

...

For all the dread sickness in waiting, fearing, sweating, wanting to run after Craig and Chris to tell them to come back, it was all over in minutes.

It didn't seem real.

The courier didn't seem to accept the outcome just yet. He put Craig in charge of security and went limping through the camp. Arcade saw the lean body and bloody blade, but he couldn't fit the image into his mental framework. He pushed it all out of mind and went without thinking on it. These men needed a doctor.

It was a small mercy that the legionaries hadn't nailed the Nelson soldiers up. They probably couldn't find anything suitable in the storehouses, no nails or spikes, just a length of rope. Arcade had seen victims of crucifixion. Few had any hope of survival.. or would want it.

The three NCR soldiers shoveled out the sandy earth at the base of the posts, and when the structures leaned, they carefully brought their brothers down. Two of them watched the proceedings with glassy eyes, delirious from pain and thirst, not knowing that they were rescued. The third just sagged when his bindings were cut, and when Arcade opened his shirt, he saw the deep purple evidence of a dislocated shoulder. They had twisted his arm out of the socket when they lashed him to the beam.

Arcade had them brought out of the sun and blood into the one of the barracks, the cleaner one. Thank God he'd had Veronica check first; that one building looked like a butcher's shed. The courier had gone straight for the decani and cut off hands and arms in a bloody rampage. Panicked by an invisible enemy, the other legionaries fled, and as soon as they stumbled out the door, Boone popped them with headshots. It must have been chaos...

Veronica gently cupped the head of a former hostage, a young man with sweaty ginger curls. Brought back into the moment by the touch of cool water on his lips, he drank deeply and noisily. Arcade felt for him. The poor young man couldn't even raise his arms to get his hands on the bucket. There was a soft expression on Veronica's face, and Arcade noticed in all the commotion that the hood had slipped off her mussed black hair.

Orion Moreno would have called these men enemies. Maybe they were. Maybe they would have followed the orders at Navarro. Maybe they would have shot Arcade even now, as he dipped rags in water and washed their wounds.

Their lieutenant had revived and with his good hand, he gripped Arcade's shoulder, his eyes red and intense. He was struggling to speak, but Gannon gave him a drink instead. Just drink. Don't say anything. Even when he lived in the Remnant's shadow, Arcade knew the world was complicated. Didn't make it any easier, though.

It was a balm to Arcade's soul every time he could help someone. Relief flashing across an injured face. Cleaning out a wound. Wrapping fresh bandages. Telling someone it's going to be all right. The young man wasn't an enemy officer. Just a young man, and one who had his face turned to the wall in shame. In a thick voice he said he couldn't believe he lost the outpost when a handful of men took it back in two minutes.

"Well it wasn't just anybody," Arcade told him. "That was the First Recon sniper they call Murder Machine, and Mister Chris is a wily old veteran." He said it even before he had time to think, but then, it just made sense. Of course it was true.

...

After the first tense hours, no re-attack came. No ambush. No reinforcements. Everyone waited for it, even the ranger, Milo, who now wanted in on some action. The courier relieved Craig of watch duty, and as the sun set, the NCR soldiers-- old and new-- went among the town and gathered the dead.

Arcade found the courier with the young soldier. The California boy was kneeling by the body of a floppy-eared mutt, his face wet with tears. "I know, son," the courier was saying softly, squeezing his shoulder once. "He was a good boy. He stood his ground. There's cool shade in doggy heaven for heroes like him."

It was a private moment and Gannon turned away, looking back only as the courier limped up beside him. "How are the others?"

"Asleep in the barracks. We had to put the lieutenant's shoulder back in, but he'll be all right. Everyone's exhausted. Veronica's trying to get the radio to work."

Old Chris looked tired, hollow-eyed. His clothes were ruined, soaked through with blood, the fabric starting to stiffen as it browned and dried. "We'll stay here tonight. There might be more. Milo and ED-E can pull watch."

"Great. I can't think of two I trust least." He paused. "I think the showerheads work in the building down by the end. You'll feel better if you wash up."

"Not now." The courier cast a look around, as though something remained that needed doing.

"I'm serious. You look like you auditioned for _Titus Andronicus_. Hell, I'd give you the part."

He thought he'd get a smile, but the courier's face was bloody, bearded, with empty-looking eyes. Gannon couldn't tell if his hands shook more than usual. He'd need new wraps for them.

"Uh, I guess you didn't read that one," Arcade said softly. "Look, um. Why don't you wash up. I thought I heard someone saying something about some sacks of rice in storage, and tortillas only a few days old.. "

...

 

By day's end, they shored up the defenses around the barracks, turning it into their headquarters. The former hostages enjoyed cool water, bed rest, and something to eat. The lieutenant still blamed himself, but the others seemed to spring back to life, young and resilient.

Arcade enjoyed a working shower, a plate of rice, and the idea that he would sleep in a cot for the night.

One of the injured soldiers took a shine to Veronica. The fluffy-headed one she revived with cool water. He watched in fascination as she fussed with the radio system, humming and talking to herself a little as she set out with parts and tools. The radio parts were why they came here in the first place. What would they have done if the courier hadn't been wrangled into this delivery?

Boone was always in and out. He moved purposefully through the outpost, scouring every building for signs of the legionaries. It wasn't that he had killed them all, but that he had killed them all too quickly. He seemed to wait for something more. Arcade talked him into taking off the stealth device, worried that it affect his thinking, but whatever mood he was in remained. At least Veronica lured him into the barracks with the promise of food, and he hunched silently over his dinner, sunglasses still on, while the NCR soldiers regarded him in awe.

Arcade had to admit that one of the greatest joys of the day was when when Craig made contact with Camp Forlorn Hope. "Sergeant Boone?" came the astonished voice crackling over the newly fixed radio. "Shit.. is that you?"

...

After dark and no sign of the courier, Arcade stepped out of the barracks and into the smoky smell of a funeral pyre. The air felt good on his damp hair and skin, though. It was still warm for a Mojave November. He'd left his lab coat over the back of a chair.

The burning smell intensified as he neared the south end of the outpost, where the soldiers had dragged away the bodies, human and animal. So much blood.

The wet parts of Arcade's throat gave a twitch. He felt a cough coming on. Disgusting. He grimaced as he approached the facility toward the back of the outpost, and listening in, he heard the irregular spraying sound from a showerhead.

Before it got dark, he went back for the courier's long coat, his tatty hat, his heavy pack. Damn if the old man didn't carry a full load. No wonder he lurched everywhere like a staggering drunk. Arcade brought the long coat with him now, folded over his arm, and a change of clothes.

Arcade rapped his knuckles on the door, faced away, looking back out to the town. He glimpsed the orb of the eyebot's body in the distance, the way the whiskers flickered as it studied its environment. "You in there, Chris?" he called.

After a minute, a dull voice said, "Yeah."

"Veronica got the radio working. Forlorn Hope is sending men now. You should have heard their surprise when they realized it was Boone over the radio. I guess he's got a reputation."

"We'll go once they get here tomorrow."

"Hey. Sorry I.. " Doubted you. "Look it's just that I didn't think it would work."

Almost irritated, as though he couldn't believe otherwise, the courier said, "Of course it would."

"Right. Uhh.. well. Look I'll talk to you when you get done. No rush." He wondered idly if he should duck in there and take away the stealth device while the courier showered. But then, he had used it once before back at Novac. He had seemed fine enough after that.

Arcade added, "I've brought your coat and a change of clothes. I'll leave them just inside the door."

...

The courier stood nearly nude beneath the rusty showerhead. Boots still on, full of water. He hated to be dirty. He hated the itchy beard that clung to his face. If only he could shave it clean. Cut his hair.

When the cold of the water became too much for him, the courier raised his shaky hands. He needed both of them to turn the faucet. Any grip or pressure now was painful.

Then he walked on unsteady steps toward where Gannon had left his clothes. Until now he hadn't thought of what he would put on after he struggled to get out of his bloodsoaked rags. For a moment he dreaded that the choice would be an NCR uniform or nothing, but he saw nondescript homespun instead. Something a fieldhand would wear.

Every step squelched water in his boots. He hadn't been able to take them off. In frustration he had used the edge of the machete to cut a long tear down the side of his pants. They had been ruined anyway. You would never wash out the jet of arterial spray. He had killed so many men today, up close, all at once-- though he couldn't even manage his damn shoelaces.

He felt a laugh start to bubble out of him as he tried to lean on a chair, trying to heel off his shoes. He slipped, though, and the edge of the chair struck him on the solar plexus. His balance wasn't so good anymore, not on his feet.

The courier lowered himself to the tile floor, waiting for the sudden nauseating pain to subside. For all of a minute he actually considered calling for Veronica. Good girl. She would help him with the laces. Then his laugh started all over again, and oh hell, how it hurt, but he thought of how it would look to call a pretty girl in here for his laces when he looked like some naked dirty old man.

 _I'd have to pull something over my lap,_ he thought, and this made him laugh harder. Oh damn. Hitting himself on that chair on the way down. _Oh damn. Is this what I've come to._

He crooked a knee and brought the heel of his boot closer in. He flexed his fingers and tried to untie the laces again. He tried to make his forefinger and thumb into little pincers to pick out the knot.

He thought how Doctor Mitchell tried to help him. The little hand exercises. That damn baseball. He said that traumatic injury or stress would make it worse. He hadn't had a flare-up so bad in years, but then, he hadn't been shot in the head before. Not in the head.

Mitchell told him that Victor dragged him out of the grave, that he was delirious and friendly, not knowing where he was. The robot chatting with him all the while. Yet again, he survived a brush with death, to what end he did not know.

He used to fear the gods hated him.

Now he started to think they kept him here just to mock him.

The pain in his hands spread all the way up his arm, and somehow into his stomach. He felt cold all over, colder than the water from the shower. He steeled himself not to vomit. He had just gone through so much trouble to wash.

An eternity seemed to pass before the cold prickles subsided. He felt heavy. His mind drifted. He still felt the sensation of being wet, and his brain gave him the idea that he is wading through deep water, the river up to his chest.

He holds his weapon out of the water as he leads the way across, his eyes trained on the rocky banks obscured in deep shadow, slow and steady to make the ford, that's it now, keep your wits, keep your rifle dry, and keep mindful of the enemy, he won't wait for you to get across, that's it boys-- he looks back to make sure he's got all of them, that none of them got swept away, but they're all gone, but for a pale woman with lank yellow hair

(the water splashes up to his mouth now, and he feels it suck into his nostrils)

 _her torn nightgown clings transparent to her skeleton and there is a hole between her eyes, her dead eyes, with the one turned inward and weird_

 _the rifle's out of his hands and the water knocks over his head_

 _he breaks gasping to the surface and she's closer, face to face, her claws digging in, her mouth splitting into a grin of needlelike teeth, a grin all the way to her ears_

...

The courier's eyes flew open. He panted in the near-darkness of the shower outbuilding, shocked out of his pain, his heavy mood. He must have faded out for a minute. His heart pounded. He didn't want to be alone, not here, not after that.

In sheer terror, he pulled the machete clean through his laces. He dressed so quickly that once he stumbled outside, he had to check to make sure he didn't put his pants on backwards-- good job hero. He was halfway to the barracks when he realized he left his gloves and wraps behind. _Oh, damn it._

...

The barracks was quiet when he entered. He saw a hurricane lantern on the floor, smelled its oil. Heard men breathing slowly and sighing in the cots. Boone perched in the corner, rifle across his knees. When the courier shuffled up close and peered down on him, he saw that the young man's eyes were shut behind the sunglasses.

"Craig," he whispered. No response. "Sergeant Boone!"

The blue eyes opened. The pupil narrowed pinprick thin.

"Go lie down."

Boone's head turned as he determined where he was, and why he was there. "Huh."

"Go lie down," the courier whispered. "It isn't right to leave a lady by herself in bed." He winked and nodded in the direction of the leftmost bunk, where Veronica had passed out in her most ridiculous posture yet. Reminded him of one of his wife's dolls after the dog got through with it.

Boone stood up. Although he and the courier were of the same height, the younger man's bulk and weight made him seem larger.

"You did good today," the courier told him. He wanted to squeeze the boy's shoulder but his hands hurt, and the old wrappings were dirty. Didn't want to leave marks on his shirt. "No one else could have made that work. I'm proud of you, Craig."

Boone muttered a sound and looked away. Sort of a half-shrug as he took his leave. Poor boy.. if only I had you sooner. If you were my soldier I wouldn't have let you down.

Everyone else looked asleep. The courier locked the door. The ranger would keep an eye on the compound, and no matter what he thought of Milo, he trusted the eyebot. The Enclave made good tech.

He saw a lab coat hanging on the back of a chair. He felt its weight when he gave it a nudge. The holotape still in one of the long inner pockets. They'd have a chance to get it to work after all this died down. He wondered what it contained.

He found Arcade in an adjoining room, his head on his arms, a plate wedged right up against them. When the Follower lifted his head, glasses tilted, there were grains of rice stuck in his hair.

"Saved you a plate," he yawned.

...

"I've read it, by the way," the courier told him over rice and tortillas. "It was one of the first I came across, so it wasn't until later that I realized how far a departure it was from the general body of his work."

Arcade blinked at him. He had his chin on his arm, the other arm partially upright from the elbow.

The courier went on, "Hell, after all the bloodshed and cannibal murders, it was Midsummer Night's Dream, and I kept wondering when the Bard would stop fucking around."

"Uh," he said.

"Titus Andronicus," the courier replied. "Shakespeare."

Arcade's eyes widened with understanding. "Oh, ohhh," he said. That conversation must have been hours ago. He'd have been busy, tending to the wounded, putting that poor boy's shoulder back in, making sure everyone had enough water, that they were clean, that nothing more was going to happen. He shouldn't have expected Gannon to remember. "Right. Well there you are."

"You look tired. Don't mind me." He was just happy not to be by himself, to be eating rice and tortillas, to be clean and safe, to have a friend who knew what he was talking about.

"No, no." Arcade was drawing up in the chair. He had a fist against his back, pressing. "Ugh. No." He smiled a weary sidelong smile. "I miss our little Mojave book club. I thought we were going to get on to Taming of the Shrew."

The courier smiled back.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," Arcade said. "You look better. I mean, not covered in blood, looking scary. That was incredible."

"Thank Craig. He did the shooting. All I did was sneak in and slice off Dead Sea's arm. It went through him like warm butter. After that, they didn't know what to do."

"Still. The both of you got away without a scratch." Arcade pushed up his glasses. "Right? Did you get cut?" He reached out toward one of the bandaged hands. "Do you feel strange at all?"

"Not a scratch." He kept his hands away. It hurt enough to try and shovel rice around with an edge of tortilla. "I'm fine."

The doctor scrutinized him a moment, but he let it go. For now. "Sorry about.. earlier. Your plan made sense."

The courier smirked. He had discovered that Arcade's brain was smarter than his mouth. He said, precisely, "You thought I was a silly old drunk who didn't know what he was doing."

A red flush crept up the Follower's neck. "Uhh, ow, hey, I was just concerned," he said. "I should have known better, though, the way you went all crazy on us back in Novac. Setting nightkin on fire with jet fuel. Making yourself into a god."

"I didn't like how Milo stood back from the whole thing. They needed his help and he just washed his hands of it."

"I know you stepped in for Craig, too," Arcade said softly. He was pressing his fingertips into his eyelids. "You think he really would have followed that order?"

"Don't know. Didn't want to find out."

Arcade watched him for a moment, and he began to feel self-conscious. Was he watching him eat. It was hard enough to get by with bad hands. Hard enough to keep good table manners. "So.. " the Follower ventured, in a halting voice. "You were in the NCR, I guess? A ranger?"

...

The courier snorted before he could even think about it. He suspected this might come up. Sometimes people asked, even when he gave them little cause to suspect he had been military. So he told Gannon what he told all the others across the years, the ones who asked: "Long ago I served in an outfit down in Mexico. You never heard of us."

Just some outfit. He felt shame in paring it all down to that, but then how to explain. Who could understand. Those poor boys. Where were they now. Better than it turned out for me, I hope. Please be out there somewhere, covered in glory and girls, drunk and happy.

For a moment he feared it might show on his face, but Arcade's eyes slid to the wall, and he looked-- he looked almost relieved. "Well," he said lightly, then. "That explains why you weren't so impressed with Milo."

"The discipline and fortitude of a ranger means nothing without honor. If he just stood by to let those boys suffer up there." The courier shook his head. "I'd rather have any one of those other three stand beside me instead. If it's all right with you, Arcade, I'd rather not talk about this anymore."

Gannon nodded. "Fine with me," he said, showing his palms.

"I just came here to bring the radio parts. I didn't even want to come here."

"I hear you," Arcade chuckled in a believe-you-me kind of voice. He had such an expressive voice. Conversation with Arcade Gannon was one of the distinct pleasures in his sorry time in the Mojave.

He felt his mood coming back. Fought it down. He was starting to come around to the idea that today had been a victory. Nobody was hurt. He helped rescue some soldiers. Everyone in the team got to contribute in a meaningful way. Tomorrow he'd talk to the young lieutenant, one on one. The kid had to be feeling bad about all this.

Gannon watched him eat. He wished he wouldn't, but then, Arcade had that spacy look like he was thinking. "So. Mister Chris. Can I call you Chris?"

"Of course." His mouth felt dry all of a sudden.

"I've been meaning to ask you something for, I don't know, two days now."

His voice held that intriguing hint of a tone that signaled the other person was going to ask something very interesting. The courier arched an eyebrow. His face felt hot. And itchy. Damn this beard.

"Hold on. I'll go get it. I'll bring you a drink, too." Arcade got up out of the chair and stretched. You could hear his bones pop. The man was one of the tallest that he'd seen.

"I'm not curious at all," the courier told him, wiping his mouth with his thumb. He loved surprises. He watched Arcade go, wondering, and then an image flashed in his mind--

 _Arcade comes back with a pistol and shoots him in the fucking head._

No-- he wouldn't. Not like that. Not like that. He'd ask. He'd be the kind that would want to know why-- he'd think it had to mean something more--

...

A flask in one hand and the Collected Works of Shakespeare in another, Arcade came back with a shit-eating grin, "Okay, so, I meant to ask you when I saw it the other night, but I don't know, the timing-- " He paused. He must have seen his face. "Are you all right? You did hurt yourself, didn't you."

"No, no. I'm fine. Go on."

"Let me see your hands," Gannon demanded, but in a battle of wills, he was going to lose.

In a tone of voice that brooked no back-talk, he said, "I think not."

"Why. I'm a doctor."

"You can't fix it. Others have tried."

"I just want to see."

"Leave me my dignity."

"How old are you?"

"Keep your voice down, Gannon. They're sleeping." Damn it, he was irritated now. "Thirty eight."

Arcade gave him a strange look, one he associated with pity, and he rolled his eyes with a sigh. He wished suddenly for the other scenario in which Gannon burst in and shot him for the bastard he was. He was still hungry, but damned if he was going to scrabble over grains of rice now. Instead he eyed the flask that Gannon placed carefully on the table.

"You know," Arcade said slowly, "you should think about shaving that beard."

And cut his throat with shaky hands?

"I bet Boone would do a good job," Arcade added as he dropped back on his seat.

"I've seen Craig's head. If he shaved me I'd be lucky to get away with my eyebrows."

Arcade grinned, scooting his chair in. "You could draw them on like a showgirl."

"What was this thing you were going to ask me?"

"Oh. Well. Never mind."

"Why did you bring that book to me?"

Arcade tightened his lips into a line, looking, judging. "I don't know," he said quietly, shutting the old book. "I think you might just get mad now though. Forget I brought it up."

The courier smiled a frustrated smile. "Oh, of course. Completely forgotten."

"Fine. Let me.. " Arcade cracked open the book again, licked his fingertip, and went through a few pages while the courier watched. He felt he knew where this was going. "I can't find it right off. But the other night when you gave me your book, I started Taming of the Shrew, and.. "

Ah, so there it was.

"Well, Chris, I couldn't help but notice something in the dramatis personae."

The courier folded his arms across his chest.

Arcade seemed not to know at first how the courier would take it, but one he saw the daring smirk, he went full on. He did that snotty know-it-all thing where he pushed his glasses up on his nose. "I saw the names of the principal characters like Katherine, Petruchio.. " They were both smiling now, that same you're-a-shit smile, so Gannon vamped it up, "But then, oh, what did I see but.. whose name did I see but that of Christopher Sly, a drunken beggar. Welllllll."

The courier said nothing.

"I was wondering if you knew anything more about that startling coincidence."

"Fine. I liked the way it sounded."

Arcade seemed delighted to have caught him out in a lie. Good job, son. Might as well toss him a bone once in a while. "Really?"

"You got me." The courier held up his hands in mock surrender. He couldn't really move his fingers all that well but from the look on Gannon's face, the gesture went across.

"So what's your name, really?"

Not a day went by that the courier honestly, truly wanted to take Arcade aside and tell him how things really were. How the world really was. What had happened in the Great War and why all of this bullshit was bullshit, and how he had hoped and dreamed for someone with the clarity of vision and strength of character to rebuild the United States of America, the whole of human civilization.

Instead, he said, "It's Edmond."

"Okay. Edmond. Was that so hard, Ed? Edmond what?"

"Edmond Dantes."

After about two seconds, Arcade laughed.

"Fuck you, you'll wake them up," the courier hissed.

"Fuck you," Arcade laughed. "I've read that book too!" _The Count of Monte Cristo._

The courier sighed. "That was a good book." There was a dryness to his throat, maybe from the low smoke outside, a lump in his throat. He washed it away with a gulp from the flask. "Fine. Peter. Peter Quince."

"That wasn't so hard."

They stare at each other across the table. The courier feared he did too much. Said too much.

"Can I ask you another question?"

No.

"Did you.. uh.. take a shower with your boots on?"


	6. Chapter 6

By the time the reinforcements marched up the road to Nelson, the courier and the gang were gone. In some sleight of hand, Peter Quince rearranged the facts of the story, made it look like only Boone had taken back the camp. The handful of survivors knew better, but once word went around that old Murder Machine had been there, the whole thing twisted and morphed out of control. To hear the story after it made its rounds, you would have thought Craig Boone killed an entire centuria. With his bare hands. With his teeth.

“I bet you could have milked it out for more caps," Veronica tutted as they hit the long and dusty road. “Difficulty pay for your radio parts delivery. Plus installation fee. And you need new clothes.”

“I’m a courier. It's my job.”

“I’m just saying you need to take more credit, Mister Chris.”

Walking point, Boone said, "Thought your name was Peter Quince.” His words went like a stone into the smooth surface of a pond.

The courier lurched to a stop. Arcade’s heart jumped to his throat, and he just blinked when the courier fixed him with a sudden sharp look.

Veronica squinted against the sun and turned a curious look between them.

“And where did you hear that, Craig?" the courier asked in a measured tone.

“Talking to Gannon.”

The courier gave Arcade a truly poisonous look, one that Arcade understood all too well. He knew how it felt to have a moment of trust betrayed.

Then Boone added, “Heard you talking." His sunglassed eyes swept over them in his typical scan of his surroundings. Maybe he had sensed what just happened here. His face was impossible to read. "Couldn't sleep.”

The gray eyes flicked away and the courier said, in his usual mild tone, “Doctor Gannon kindly brought to my attention that Christopher Sly is the name of a character in a Shakespeare play.”

Veronica shaded her eyes with her hands. Her expression was contemplative. “So is it Christopher.. or Peter? What do we call you?”

"Why'd you go by a different name.”

“Let's take a step back," Arcade intervened. “Someone tried to have him killed, and not just anyone. The Chairmen. They practically run the Vegas Strip. Hell, they'd probably try again if they found out he was still alive. I don't blame him for trying to keep a low profile. He can call himself anything he wants and that's fine by me."

The black lenses seemed to catch the courier's eye; the young sniper nodded grimly, just once. “Don't worry about that," Boone said softly. “They won't know what hit them.”

"That's a good point," Veronica said. “I was just going to tease you a little, but it's all right. I didn't think of it that way, Arcade. You're lucky to be alive, Mister Chris.”

The courier walked on. That lurching walk, like he had a stray stone in his shoe.

Veronica added, “I’m going to keep calling you Mister Chris, though. I don't like Peter. You don’t look like a Peter.”

He didn't, really, now that Arcade thought about it. He never really thought about him with a name, more an image of a bent back, a tattered hat, that long coat. A beard and waving bandaged hands. He didn't need a name when it had been just the two of them wandering the Mojave. Now the image of the old man was changed. Thirty-eight. He’s only a few years more than me, if that’s the truth.

"Want to hear more about your Mexican outfit," Boone said.

“It was a black jacket with very tight pants," the courier replied. “Lots of sequins. Tassels on the sombrero. The ladies loved it.”

“No. When you were in the army.”

“Perhaps another time, Craig.”

...

They hit Novac just as the sun sank into the sand. The scales of the rex shone red-gold, and her shadow went long. The little crossroads settlement saw more travelers these days; half-in and half-out the gates, a whole caravan arrayed itself. Stomping, lowing cattle, wagons circled up, and armed wastelanders flowing in and out of the gates.

A band of half-wild children ran out to bring them in. Arcade spotted the morbid little girl, Spotted Fawn, who skipped up with her arms and a dolly outstretched. Craig scooped her up, and when the little girl swung her arms and the dolly around his thick neck, Arcade saw that the gruesome dolly had no head.

Clearing out the feral ghouls up the road had opened Novac to more trade. Though never seen since the night the god Antler spoke, the troop of mutants must have frightened off some of the riffraff in the area.

Manny was just coming off shift, and he welcomed the gang with kindness and cheer.

"What have you been up to, man? The morning patrol was all over this place asking questions. Said you radioed in from Camp Nelson. Killed a hundred legion sons of.. something.” He seemed to visibly remember that Boone was holding a child.

“Only nineteen.”

“No, no, Boone.. go with the hundred. That’ll get ‘em scared.”

Spotted Fawn chirped girlishly, “They can’t get scared if they’re dead.”

“Uh huh,” Boone grunted in a ‘that’s right, baby’ kind of way.

Manny pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Hey, you come in and hang around. Huh?"

“I’ll take night.”

“You don't have to work a shift. We've got so many new people coming in, we've got them working watch for a couple hours a piece.”

Boone was silent. The black lenses stared. "All right," he said.

...

Arcade had watched him closely since the episode at Nelson. That was his first use of the stealth device. It was said-- rumored?-- that the stealth device interfered with one's mode of thinking, that it made its user paranoid and delusional. Yet that night he saw only a change for the better.

Craig seemed to let himself relax a little. Talking again with Manny was good for him. He sat in the company of his old friend and the eccentric half-tribal family that had taken him in as a boy. That gigantic sister of Manny’s and her squalling brood. Her meek husband with the incredible moustache. There was a smirking young man with a red Mohawk and leather vest, and he had what looked like a tame gecko that sat in his lap.

Veronica seemed to want to support Boone, but all the attention seemed to embarrass her. In one mortifying moment early in the evening, one of the Khan men grabbed her little hand in both of his and pronounced drunken blessings for their union. Cracked Tar was a brawny gentleman with sweaty pit rings and a sprawling odor. Like almost everyone else, he looked on her friendship with Boone and drew very different conclusions.

Arcade bustled in with some work-related excuse. Good old ‘Nurse Veronica.’

"You could cut the awkward with a knife," she moaned as she leaned into his side when he drew her away.

"I know. I've been there. Do you want people to know, y'know, about you, or?"

She hunched her shoulders and just dropped them. "I just don't want them to say something that will hurt Boone if he hears it. And he hears everything."

"Right. I'll ask Manny if he can.. I don't know, crowd control. Pretty sure he’s on it already though." Like his former spotter, Vargas demonstrated a scary talent of perception. He knew just as well as Arcade that Boone was in a shaky place right now and should be allowed to heal. You couldn’t just go around picking the scabs off.

"He seems in a better mood, I guess,” Veronica mused. “I’m not a Boonologist or anything. Just an amateur. I like it when he sings, though. I’d like to just open his head and see what’s in there, you know? Just rummage around in there.”

Arcade imagined an attic with some cobwebs and a little mouse nibbling a corn kernel. With a little sniper tripod setup and a little mouse beret. He wasn’t sure why, other than he was incredibly tired.

“Let’s just keep an eye on the both of them,” he said, wiping his glasses off on the tail of his shirt. “I don’t know how true the rumors are.. I mean, I’ve never seen anything about the Stealth Boys in a real medical text. You know?”

Veronica smirked. “It could just be a rumor. I know that’s the rumor I would spread. I wouldn’t want people spying and gossiping. Keep its power all to myself. Just think what kind of mischief you could get up to. Mister Chris was right. You could really have fun with it.. “

Though he flashed a grin back, Arcade said, “I’m serious.”

“I know. So, doc, looks like somebody’s trying to get your attention over there."

“I hope it’s a people problem this time. I mean. Not that I hope people have medical problems. I’m just tired of playing vet.”

“What?” Veronica placed a palm on the chest of her potato sack. “You don’t like to stand shoulder deep in cow vagina?”

Arcade sighed as he settled his glasses back on his nose. “I would say that is about the direct opposite of what I like.” He pushed the glasses back.

The scribe giggled. “Have fun. If you need a helper, call for me. Otherwise I’m going to take in a hot shower and work on your holotape.” She batted her eyelashes prettily. “Because you’re not going to be doing anything with it, right? That holotape you’re hoarding up? I could fix it for you.”

“Wouldn’t want to lose it in a Brahmin,” Arcade said darkly.

...

One of the caravaners hurt his ankle when a crate fell on it. He'd already taken off his boot and the whole thing was swelling. Arcade sat with the man's leg over his knee, foot in hand, turning to see if it was broken.

"Try to wiggle your toes for me."

"HURTS, you sumbitch!"

"I know. I’m trying to determine that you can move your toes. If you can’t, it could be broken. So try to wiggle them, move them around.”

“I need you ta fix me! Now you’re just torturin me here.”

“It’s for your own good. With your foot swollen like this, it’s too hard for me to tell what’s happened.”

“A crate fell on it, that’s what happened!”

“Just.. nngh, wiggle, will you? Please?”

After this, he was asked to meet with a young lady pregnant with her first child. She might have been sixteen. There was little that Arcade could tell at this stage with what he had in his doctor's bag, but the girl was nervous. She seemed to want to talk more than anything.

"You tell if it's a boy or a girl?"

There used to be ways. Scientific ways, of course, not superstition.

"Not until your baby's born, no," Arcade replied.

"S'it true you do it woman on top, it's a boy baby?"

Arcade sighed and pushed up his glasses. Very gently he began to explain what happened when the the sperm cell fused with the egg cell, and so on, but her pockmarked face registered only confusion. Particularly the part about the zygote. That had been a mistake.

Goats and eggs?

"Don't worry about it," he said. "It'll be a surprise."

Then he was asked to look at one of the cattle, a sickly beast down on its front forelegs.

Oh no, not again. Veronicaaaaa..

"She got bit by a snake," the owner told him. "Don't know whater do. My boy Jeth try to suck out the pizin. Don't know-all what that done, she's bad off."

Thank Christ.

...

The courier had gone straight to the bed and stopped only when his shins touched the frame. Then he flopped face first onto the mattress. All his. For now. He had a sneaking suspicion that the shuffle of people was going to leave Arcade with him tonight. He enjoyed their talks together when everyone else was asleep. He didn’t feel he ought to widen their conversation to include anyone else. Didn’t have to worry he was leaving them behind. Boring them. It was a rare pleasure to encounter someone as educated as Arcade Gannon. A very rare pleasure. Such thoughtful discourse he had only heard before from old holotapes and a strange purring voice on a New Arroyo radio station.

He might have limped out of Nevada if it hadn’t been for Arcade. He didn’t want trouble with the Chairmen. Best to go on his way, but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. Arcade Gannon was being wasted there, and he seemed to be sighing and pouting around, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Turns out people will do almost anything if you tell them to do it in just the right voice.

Still, he didn’t know how he felt with sharing quarters with Arcade again. After what had happened. He didn’t like the greasy feeling of having told too much, having let on too much. He neither wanted nor deserved Arcade’s pity. That was worst of all, though he dreaded the curiosity as well. The new little looks and glances, like Arcade was trying to figure out what he would look like. Who he really was. If only Arcade had been married with a family. The courier would have enjoyed limping up to their porch once in a while with a new book to trade. He would have loved the little wife. Instead, Arcade was bent the way he was, handsome and blond, with a deceptively toned body beneath the shapeless lab coat.

At least he was too exhausted tonight to worry about that. Arcade would probably try to find a way to get Manny Vargas alone. Good for him. He deserved a little fun, and why not see if you could get away with fucking a First Recon man? I’d only hurt him. I can’t do this again.

The sounds of human festivity were coming through the thin walls of the motel. He heard someone with a fiddle, someone singing, but it came to him soft and muted as he slowly slipped away.

...

 _In his dream, he moves in darkness toward a dim red light. His hands are whole again. His hands are young. They trace the cool walls of the cavern and he moves toward desert sandstone lit by a natural opening. His heart pounds as it did that day long ago, the first time he was left for dead._

 _A man sings faraway, deep and rich._

 _The echo of a dog's bark somewhere._

 _(we will leave you to the gods, the gods decide!)_

 _He sees red on his hand and jerks it away, but it is only paint. The walls are painted. The walls are carved. New paint, old paint, and ancient carvings from after the Burning, and from long before._

 _The cave wall pictures tell the same story, be they old or new: a great and rushing water, and the beast with glowing eyes._

 _(the green faces of the women)_

 _A voice speaks softly in the cavern._ We have made a place for you _. The voice giggles. That damned giggle. It isn't right. That isn't what he was remembering. A span of some thirty years between those memories._

 _He finds himself staring into the bathroom mirror of his motel room, the first one up the stairs that Jeannie May rented him._

 _Something moves in the shadow of the adjoining space._

 _He has no weapon, and no weapon that could harm the dead._

 _“I have not wronged you," he speaks aloud. Though he cannot see her, he knows full well who has come for him tonight. “I am sorry for what has happened.”_

 _A screechy little giggle from somewhere. Such a hideous voice for so beautiful a woman._

 _He must not show fear. The spirits of the Lower House feed on fear._

 _Steeling his jaw, he looks into darkness and sees no sign of her. She is tricky. She hides in shadow, in little starts and flashes. She delights in torments. She feeds on anguish and horror._

 _“Craig loves you," the courier tells her, “and he'll always love you, but he's in a dark place now. I want to help him."_

 _The giggle merges with the rising rattle of a thousand serpents._

 _(so many of them slithering over his body, why didn't they bite him, if only they bit him, even once)_

 _His voice falters. "Tell me how to help him."_

 _In the reflection a face crowds close to his face, a woman's face, with long blond tendrils like the writhing of snakes. Her lipstick smears half over her mouth and chin. Her mascara runs from hopeless sobbing. Her teeth show sharp and huge in a grin too wide for a normal mouth. She giggles a breathy giggle._

 _A thin red trickle runs from the hole between her eyes._ We have made a place for you.

...

The courier looked dead to the world when Arcade finally let himself in. Novac lived up to the name tonight, and he thought Peter wouldn't mind the company. Fleabitten strangers filled every other room, and Casa Vargas was littered with comfortable snoring bodies on wall-to-wall mattresses. Arcade took it as a minor victory that Boone spent the night there with Manny and assorted friends and family. Random weird Khan types.

Speaking of--

Arcade had come back from his foray into caravan medicine tonight only to discover two things: there was a note (Gone fishin’!) on Daisy Whitman’s door, and Manny’s boyfriend was the sleazy looking Khan punk with the red Mohawk, fake leather vest, and smelly gecko.

‘Don’t be mad, man, it’s different… come on back with us, we’ll all have some laughs.’ he’d said, stroking his arm, and Arcade replied: ‘Oh, yeah, you, me, him, and his frog, you only live once right?’

‘Yeah see?’

‘Uh yeah that was sarcasm.’

Manny had blinked a second, then burst into a warm laugh with white teeth. It could have been worse. He’d done worse. Vargas was kind, concerned with everyone’s wellbeing, and just content to breathe life in. The town more or less existed because he chose to defend and nourish it. That big dinosaur would have stood another two centuries all by itself. Now children played in its shadow. He couldn’t be mad or disappointed. He probably shouldn’t fool around with a First Recon sniper anyway, but then, if worse came to worse someday, maybe Manny would watch him through the scope and remember good times they shared. Maybe he would remember Daisy’s kindness to him. She’d set them up, after all, in her own delightfully Daisy way—(“And this here is my Arcade, he’s a doctor, he’s with the Followers of the Apocalypse, and God bless him, he’s about as queer as a three dollar bill.”)

Oh Daisy. He hoped she was safe. She wasn’t as young as she used to be. Whenever she said she’d ‘gone fishin’, she usually meant some stint at scavenging.

Arcade washed his hands at the sink as quietly as he could. Pushing up his sleeves. Getting his block of soap out of his pocket. Picking pocket lint off of it.

He kept looking over his shoulder to see if he would wake the courier, but the man was flat out. Face down. Feet off the bed. Arcade stared, hands going still, while the water ran.

Twisting the faucet off, he went to check on the courier. The man was breathing normally enough. After a moment's decision, he went across to the bed and took one of the boots in his hands. The laces actually weren't all that hard to undo. He pulled off both boots and put a line through one of his personal theories. He had wondered if the courier had an amputated foot. Just the way he walked. But in the dim light he just saw two socked feet. The one on the right needed some more patching up.

Then he saw that the courier still wore his long coat, his Pip Boy. The stealth gauntlet.

That would wake him up for sure. If he wasn't paranoid by now, that wouldn't help.

Arcade sighed and pushed a hand through his grimy hair. He would deal with it in the morning. Drawing on the way the Followers treated drug addicts, he would try to convince Peter to stop wearing it himself.

The shower was delicious.

He soaped his clothes and washed them under the tub faucet. Then he hung them over the bar. Better stab at laundry tomorrow. Maybe they could buy new clothes from the caravan. The courier was in dire need of new boots.

Arcade stepped out of the shower, feeling clean and cool with the night air on his skin. He was feeling his way half-blindly back on when he finally saw huge eyes staring at him in the dark. He almost jumped.

“Oh. Hey. Sorry. I didn't know if the shower would wake you.”

...

The courier stared at him wildly.

"You all right? We're in Novac. Sorry. I just kind of helped myself. The place is packed. I didn't think you'd mind.”

The courier nodded. Arcade always hated that ambiguity.. So what, did he mind, or did he not mind?

“Dream," he said.

Arcade plunked down on the other end of the bed, the one nearest to the door. “Yeah? What about?”

“Old things.”

“Do you want to--”

“No.”

Trying to lighten the mood a little, Arcade said in his sleazy Gannon Smolder sort of voice, "You don't even know what I was going to say.”

The courier shot him a hard look. “Uh," Arcade recovered, “Shower’s all yours. You'll feel better.”

The bed remained still. Then it sank down on one side as the courier shifted his weight, trying to pull off his long coat. “Manny ever talk about Carla?”

Arcade set his glasses on the nightstand. “Yeah.”

“He didn’t like her.”

“It was complicated. Manny was just trying to look out for Craig.”

“Is it like that?”

“No. Manny’s family took him in when his mother died. She was a caravan guard, a sharpshooter.”

“Raiders.”

“No. From what Manny described to me, it sounded like heatstroke. Anyway, they grew up as brothers.”

A slight pause, and then, “You and Manny.. ?”

“Maybe not the best idea anymore. Fun while it lasted, though. I’ll give him that. He’s a good guy.” He saw the courier struggling with his coat, so he reached over to lend a hand. A mistake. “Hey, sorry. Trying to help. Maybe you should take off that gauntlet, too.”

“Might need it.”

“Here? We’ve got a whole caravan, ED-E, and two First Recon snipers.”

“Do we know everyone in the caravan?”

He was worried about the Chairmen again. He did have a point. “Tell you what. Put it on the nightstand where you can reach it. You need to let it charge up again."

The courier sat motionless for a moment. Then he sighed and held out the dark shape of his arm. “Here.”

...

Arcade slowly woke to the random sluggish idea that the courier was hispanic. Maybe. He came out of a sleep so deep that he just stared blankly and content, his right eye open to the sight of the brown body twisted in the sheets nearby. They must have rolled closer to each other in the night. That was all right. Veronica tucked in against you and didn't bother you after that. Boone would grab you and hug you half to death. The courier would just ball up and hide his hands close to his chest, like he protected them.

He thought the courier looked tanned from the sun, his long travels, but then he saw the color went even all over. Peter Quince wore his loose shirt to bed, and it opened across a leanly defined torso with a smattering of scars.

Later, over a breakfast of eggs and toast, Arcade asked him.

“Ay, _¿hablas español?_ ”

“Yes.”

“ _¿Quieres hablar conmigo?_ ”

The courier smiled. “Not particularly, no thank you,” he said. “English is fine.”

“ _¿Por que no?_ ”

“Sorry, _guapo_. Not now.” The courier sopped up some yolk with the edge of bread, watching it as he did so. “What brought this on?”

“I just want to know more about you.”

“You never answer my questions.”

“I’m boring.”

“I can decide for myself what bores me or not.”

Arcade shrugged. “I don’t do backstory. Anyway, I remembered you said you were in Mexico.”

“At least tell me something.”

“Fine. I wanted to join the army as a little kid, but I had this crazy uncle who kind of killed it for me.”

“Hmm. And?”

“My favorite color is green. I used to play the piano.”

“Don’t stop there.”

“I love noir detective stories. The bad ones. And, that’s all I’ve got. So. Mexico.”

The courier nodded slowly, chewed slowly. “Yes. I’ve seen a lot of the upper Sonora. And a little further down in the interior.”

“I’ve been curious to know the extent of the destruction.”

“The areas we saw weren’t as damaged directly in the Great War. The communists weren’t going to waste warheads on a saguaro cactus sticking out of the ass-end of Mexico.”

Arcade leaned in. “So, there’s people?”

“They didn’t survive any more than the others, if that’s what you mean. I don’t know if there were any vaults. I didn’t find any. We came across two cities while we were there, but they were all in ruins like those here. Same wild savages. Same state of dystopia."

“I guess it’s all the same everywhere,” Arcade said. “I used to think.. “ He had to be careful, but the desire to talk about this was strong. Not many people knew so much about the Old World and what had happened. “I used to wonder if there was a surviving civilization somewhere. Not like this, I mean. A city somewhere with lights and power.”

“The lights are on in Vegas.”

“Uh, yeah, to power the strip clubs and casinos, thanks to weird old Mr. House.”

The courier smiled. “It’s a start.”


	7. Chapter 7

They while away a few days in Novac. A good time. Good memories. There was a brief tense moment where Manny let slip that someone in the caravan was looking for the courier. Though he acted natural when he said it, you could see the grim excitement on the faces of the two First Recon men. They wanted to bust heads.

But it turned out to be just another courier, a pretty thing with sweaty red hair up in a wrap. She punched their courier on the shoulder. “Hey, Mister Robin. Heard you were dead!”

There was an abundance of people and conversation. Gossip. News. Veronica tried in vain to fix the holotape. Boone grilled some barbecue.

There were things to buy, and they had a little money split between them.

Veronica bought three-fourths of an empty journal and a blue inkwell half-crusted shut. For fun, she also picked up a dogeared magazine called Housewife, which was to become the gang’s entertainment over the next couple of days.

“Can’t you see me with my hair like this?” she said with an inkstained finger on a beehive style.

“Don’t think we ever really get to see your hair,” Boone replied. The thing he bought was a tin of flavored chewing tobacco. He tucked a good wad of leaves in by his molar and, aware of Arcade’s half-grimace of a stare, he held out the tin in a wordless offer.

Hovering just over Boone’s shoulder, ED-E slowly tilted as though it were taking in a closer look at the tin for itself. Never mind the old-time baseball players, that stuff just wasn’t good for you. But who was he to piss on Craig’s fun. He looked well-rested, at ease for once, like a man puttering round in his own backyard.

Arcade looked in vain for a new shirt. He wanted something light and cotton that he could fold up tight and take with him for a spare. Something that breathed. But out here among the caravans or in the trading post, the pick of clothing depended on hand-me-downs. Little luck for someone his height. One of the caravaners almost sold him a very functional shirt with good pockets, but when he tried it on, it fell short and exposed a trail of blond hair down from his navel. He felt sleazy, though the vendor giggled behind her hand.

People always expected him to be scrawny and smooth for some reason.

After awhile he gave up and looked among the bits and bobs instead. Tools and trinkets. He wanted to find the courier a new pair of boots. Maybe some new gloves. A new hat. Hell, a new everything. Instead he opted for a couple October apples, small and tough, but the best he could manage. The gang needed to eat more servings of fruit anyhow.

Apparently having caught wind of his search from earlier, a kindly old man with a face like a potato came and tweaked him by the arm. “Hey tall fella, we got some clothes yer size. Took it off a tall drink of water like yourself—he wudn’t but a day dead neither! Just don’t you mind the holes, a few more bleachins and the stain’ll fade! I get it to ya cheap, young son.”

“You could just go around without a shirt,” Veronica chirped later, when they sat together on a couple haybales in the motel courtyard.

“Oh, sure, that’s not creepy at all.” Arcade hung his hands in his belt loops, and in his sultriest, gayest voice, he said, “Tell Doctor Gannon where it hurts, baby.” He ran his hand over his chest to Veronica’s howl of amusement.

“Oh Arcade! You’ve got to do that next time. Then you’ll never be asked to help a cow birth ever again.”

“Yeah, then I’ll be the poor jerk who gets to collect the sample from the bull. No more livestock from now on,” he griped bitterly. “Just people.”

Veronica stared at him all of two seconds before she burst into laughter.

“And yeah I just realized how that sounded. That’s not what I meant. I meant I’m tired of vet work.”  
Veronica looked like she was going to shake and fall off the haybale.

“Seriously, Veronica.”

“Doctor Gannon’s Freeside Clinic & Massage Parlor! The fastest wrist in the west!”

“Damn it, Veronica.”

...

They left when the caravans left, and when the morning patrol brought news from Camp McCarran. The lieutenant with the scratchy-faced skin condition passed along that the presence of Christopher Sly was requested there.

Peter Quince kindly thanked them and took the gang down the opposite way.

It didn’t seem to sit right with Boone. A lieutenant had just told them to report to Camp McCarran. “Shouldn’t we go?”

“You’re retired, Craig, you don’t have to do a damn thing you don’t want to. I keep telling you that. You can walk away if you want to. I would be sad, because I like you—“ Veronica leaned over to walk close to Arcade, putting her hand over her heart with a little awwww look on her face, “but don’t let me stand in your way.”

“The lieutenant said.”

“You’ll note that O’Donnell specified only my name.”

Boone digested this. “So. You’re not going?”

“I would prefer not to.”

Arcade made a dramatic swoop of his hand. “Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!”

“I did that for you, Arcade Gannon,” the courier said, grinning over his shoulder. He had a little chip in his front tooth that endeared him to you.

“Why do you keep avoiding the NCR,” Boone said flatly.

Why do you, Arcade also wondered. Not that he had any great desire to waltz into the enemy stronghold.

“I want to mind my own business. That is why. And it makes me feel like a sentimental old man. I miss the old days.”

“You’re a couple years older than Gannon.”

Veronica touched her fingertips to her lips. “Mister Chris. All this time I thought you were a venerable elder. Are you telling me you’re in your late thirties?”

Arcade was ready with an excuse if the courier looked his way. He hadn’t told them anything of their conversation in the makeshift Nelson barracks. But Boone had already admitted to having overheard. The courier never looked back at him, though, he just shook his shaggy head, eyes down.

“You are, aren’t you. And I wanted you to be my nice old grandpa. And not, you know, the weird, controlling isolationist one.” Her voice took on that fun little waver that meant gentle sarcasm, but she was trying to get in a good look at him, curious.

Boone nodded slightly, as if the explanation confirmed what he already suspected. “Was wondering if you got the sons of bitches who hurt you.”

“No.”

“No?”

“’Tis more noble to forgive than to revenge an injury.’ Benjamin Franklin said that.”

“Who,” Boone said.

Arcade replied, “Juvenal says revenge is a dish best served cold.”

The First Recon man took out a slow scoop of chewing tobacco, and right before loading it in: “Get the fuckers and make em bleed. Craig Boone said that.”

Veronica smirked. “I’ll write that down.”

...

They ate little October apples in the shade of a dilapidated farmhouse. The taste was tart and fresh. The breeze was good for a little while near sunset.

The younger two were trying to tweak ED-E into playing the radio again. Boone’s apple-juicy fingers left a clean wet mark on the robot’s dusty body. Arcade wished he wouldn’t mess with the eyebot so much. It was bound to click wrong and start spewing Enclave propaganda. Veronica stood too close to ED-E and one of the metal whiskers got caught on her scratchy robe, and it was much more entertaining than it should have been-- sitting there together, watching Boone try to disentangle the Enclave eyebot from Veronica's clothing.

Gannon sat on the broken porch by the courier. The wood was warm from soaking in a day of sun. Felt good. The weather was starting to change and this was the time of year that Arcade liked best in the Mojave. Before it went from scorching hot days to frigid nights, dry and itchy all the time.

“Hey,” he said.

The courier nodded. “Thank you for these.” He held up his apple. A big white bite taken out of it. He seemed content to just sit there, which made Arcade feel slightly bad for what he wanted to get at.

“I need to see your hands if they’re hurt.”

“No you don’t.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“There’s nothing you can do. It’s been like that for six years.”

“You can still learn to manage it. Make it better. I thought it was just normal aches and pains. Getting old. Bad joints. But hell, you don’t get that way at our age unless something drastic happens.”

The courier scowled into his apple. Before taking a bite, he said, “I don’t want your pity.”

Arcade shook his head. “Then I won’t offer it. But let me help you help yourself. All right? If you won’t let me look, then just listen. I’ve seen cases before where people get injured, and then they avoid using what was injured, or they protect it. And that just makes it worse. If you don’t use muscles they get weaker, right? I once knew a family whose youngest son broke his leg when he fell out of a tree. After that, they refused to let him run around or get into trouble like kids do. He favored that leg. Because he didn’t test it or strengthen it in any way, it ended up a weak, bad leg. Now that he’s grown, he has to walk with a cane.”

The courier sighed. “Doc Mitchell had me squeezing a baseball. The damned baseball exercise.”

This Doc Mitchell person he’d heard about. He’d like to meet the man. “That’s the right idea. You said it got worse since your head injury, right?”

The courier threw his apple core away. ED-E honed in on it and started to zoom that way, with its whisker still stuck to Veronica. ("Hey! Oomph!")

“It sounds like you have nerve damage. That’s normal. I think that’s why your hands shake. I don’t think we can make it go away, but there are ways to help you. Please.”

Arcade knew it was a touchy subject. For all his limping, shuffly, I’m-a-kooky-harmless-old-man-don’t-mind-me routine, there was a stubborn pride and machismo that he was beginning to discover. Well. What the hell. “And I think you can shave off the bird’s nest, too. I’ll do it for you if you want. Whoever’s looking for you won’t be here, right? And the ones looking for you now will be looking for doddering old Christopher Sly. Not cleaned up Peter Quince with a new lease on life. Look, I know Benny fucking Gecko is the prince of the Strip, but he can’t be all that sharp, haven’t you seen how he dresses himself?”

And, well, might as well. In for a penny. “And Peter Quince is also a Shakespeare character. Veronica wanted to do Midsummers Night Dream next, so I looked ahead, and.. yeah. And, you look pissed at me.”

The courier leaned his forearm across his knee and bent in. His eyes were flint chips. “ _What is the point of all this?_ ” he hissed.

...

Arcade took in a deep breath. “I think you should join the Followers of the Apocalypse. We need someone like you.”

The courier looked—was he angry? He was usually so cheerful and upbeat, Arcade wasn’t sure he had a very good handle on anything that deviated from the positive.

Unconsciously, Arcade wiped his sweaty palms on his heavy coat. “I’m just saying. You like to travel? Sure, hey, the Followers are all over the place. You like the Old World? Oh wow, but wait, what’s this? Who has all the books and holotapes? Who else will get your references? Laugh at your Oscar Wilde quotes? You like to help people? Followers love to help people. Hey. Ladies love you, kids love you. It’ll be great. Stupendous.” Ramble ramble ramble.

The courier’s scruffy face held an expression he could still not decipher. But then the shadow melted away and the courier, whoever he was, gave out a laugh that sort of bubbled out, rich and deep. There was that flash of a chipped front tooth.

“You can’t be fucking serious,” he cried out in a voice full of hilarity and bitterness.

“C’mon. I’ll take you to Julie.”

“She's still angry at me for almost dropping her shipment of medicines.”

“Hey, your hands shake, okay. Not your fault. Look. You don’t have to worry about it. I'll talk to her. We’ll protect you from the Chairmen. It didn’t sound like it was personal, you know? You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’ll smooth it over. Who do you think Benny Gecko calls for when he needs a doctor? Hell. I think in the month before you showed up, we must have resuscitated at least three showgirls that passed out from chems at the Tops Casino.”

The courier’s brow knit together. He looked tempted. “I’ll think about it,” he said, almost wretchedly, like he didn’t want to get his hopes up. “I’ve.. I’ve thought about it before. I don’t know if they’d take me.”

The last part came out with a questioning edge to it.

“Why wouldn’t they?"

...

That evening, they boarded up the farmhouse for a night’s roost. You had to be careful about some of the buildings, since raiders and fiends could sober up and stagger out of their hiding places. Then you had spiders and scorpions to worry about. Snakes too. Snakes were the worst. To put him at ease, Veronica had concocted some bullshit about ED-E being able to scan for snakes because he could look for small sources of body heat. This lasted all of five minutes before the courier scowled and pointed out that reptiles were ectothermic.

“Whatever,” Boone said. “Not going to work either way. Snakes are cold blooded.”

The courier loved him just the way he was.

They set about to sweeping dust and grit to the corners. Barricading the windows. Boone helped Arcade shove half of a three-legged table up against one of the barren doorframes. Veronica got ED-E to switch off its light and the courier put him on a patrol outside. Everything was easier with the eyebot. You didn’t have to stand watch if it wasn’t too wild.

The courier avoided Gannon for most of the evening. Their conversation had gone too deep, too personal. He still felt it. Of course he wanted to get better. Of course he wanted help. He had thought of the Followers before, but it never seemed an option. Arcade would vouch for him, though, wouldn’t he? And then what. He would owe Arcade. Arcade would be responsible for him, and he would be responsible for anything that happened to Arcade after that. It was already bad enough. He couldn’t betray Arcade’s trust and generosity like that.

But it was a pleasant idea. As they worked to clear up the rickety old farmhouse for the night, the courier let his mind wander to thoughts of future adventures. Some vague mental picture of Arcade holding a stethoscope to a child and saying, with very genuine care in his eyes, “It’s all going to be all right.”

Craig was also in a better mood. There he was, humming again. Who knew he possessed such talent. Maybe it was because he was getting to know them better that he felt relaxed enough to share.

“Wish you’d do one I know,” Arcade remarked, but then he opened himself up for:

“Which ones do you know.”

Arcade backed down after that, leaving the courier to wonder.

After awhile, when things wound down, the courier started to think he should talk to Arcade again. He didn’t want to leave off at their last conversation. Too heavy. And trying to avoid himin the small farmhouse was more conspicuous than anything.

“So you have a book you want me to read,” Arcade prompted him, “but the first few pages are missing.” He was on the back porch just as it got dark, shaking the dust out of his lab coat.  
Eager for some sort of normalcy between them, the courier replied, “Yes, it’s called Lord of the Flies.. it explains everything.”

“Everything,” Arcade intoned. “That’s a tall order, isn’t it? So tell me what happens in the first few pages, and I’ll read the rest.”

“The story begins in the aftermath of a plane crash somewhere in the Pacific. Some wild uncharted island. The only survivors are a bunch of school boys.”

“Is it like Robinson Crusoe?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“You sound so.. emphatic.” Arcade grinned. “I’m not making fun of you. I’m curious. I want to read your book. Your recommendations have all been good.”

“The boys are left with the dilemma of what to do with themselves. There are no grown-ups anywhere. The main character is a boy who takes on the role of the leader. His struggle with trying to maintain order in chaos. There’s another boy who is very pudgy and weak, but the most intelligent of the group. Another boy is innocent, spiritual even. Of course the larger group of other boys are important to note, the crowd, the mob, how they are swayed one way or another. And there is a great darkness on the island, far away from civilization.. ”

He didn’t mean to sound so intense, but he needed Gannon to understand.

Later in the night, he listened to Boone snore, Gannon sigh, and Veronica mutter. The ruined farmhouse creaked and groaned as it adjusted in its foundations. Carla scratched beneath the floorboards, whispered, rattled, hissed.


	8. Chapter 8

Some two days later, sprawling in the shade of a watering post, the courier said, “You and Manny were there four years ago, at Boulder City.”

“Yeah.”

“What was it like?”

“Boring. Hot. Mostly we laid around on the ground.”

“You and Vargas killed two centurions.”

Boone poured some of the water over his head, letting it run down into his shirt. “Their little hats made them stand out.”

“That crest is much a little hat as your beret, Craig.”

The sniper shrugged. “Made it easier to line up the crosshairs. Manny got a clear shot but I was little excited after all the explosions. Laying down you could feel the rumble all up your body. Couldn’t keep my breathing still. Ended up knocking out his upper jaw and nose. He had kind of this. Cavern. In his face. Worked all the same though. They don’t know what to do when you kill their officers.”

“They don’t put much reward in thinking for yourself,” the courier remarked.

Veronica seemed to take pleasure in Boone’s achievement. “I heard that after that, the big bad scary legionaries couldn’t run away fast enough.”

“Heh.”

Arcade remembered the days and nights of bloody cots, cramped field hospitals, where the only anesthesia was something hard to bite down on. The Followers and NCR had no love lost between them, but they did everything they could to help the NCR in the effort to stave off the Legion. After the red tide poured across the Dam, Arcade had considered a long-lost set of armor and arsenal hidden in a desert canyon bunker.

Veronica flapped and spread a dingy blanket they used for picnics. It made a slight breeze that felt good on Arcade’s face. It wasn’t thick enough to pad against all the dirt and grit and gravel, you’d still feel it, but better than nothing.

Arcade climbed on his elbows and knees onto the blanket and just flopped out. Tired of walking. He wanted to drink water, lounge in the shade, lay around. Nap. Read, maybe. ““Hopefully we’ll remember those tactics for next time. They aren’t likely to change their ways. It’s just there’s so many of them.”

Boone grunted. “Get more ammo.”

“What they should do is get someone in there to kill Caesar,” Veronica said. “Oh man. Pop the popcorn.”

Arcade shrugged. “It might be possible to bribe someone close to him. Offer someone in his inner circle a way out. Or tell them, ‘Hey, we’ll let you be the next Caesar, just stay on your side on the river.’ Diplomatically, politically, we’ve got a lot of logical options. But would that work? They’re not logical, not rational. They’re a bunch of savage little boys playing dress-up. And none of them really live long enough to figure it out.”

“What about Joshua Graham?” Veronica rolled onto her belly on the blanket, her feet cocked up in a girly style. She looked adorable in that funny potato sack she wore. “I mean, if the rumors are true, that he’s still alive.”

“Probably a story to scare the kids,” Arcade said. “Hey, little Lucius, you better finish your plate of human flesh or else the creepy evil old man covered in tar is going to claw his way out of the Grand Canyon.” Sounded like something Orion Moreno used to say.

Veronica laughed. “Sort of like the stories about evil zombie Richardson, you know, the Enclave president? Slowly walking ashore from his watery, irradiated grave? That’s why you eat all your vegetables.”

“Yeah, like that,” Arcade said lamely. “Really? You’ve really heard that?” Great to know the final legacy of your doomed country came in the form of spooky stories moms frightened kids with.

“Personally?” Veronica hunched her shoulders and smiled. “I would love to see some foxy lady spy pretend to be a dancing girl or something for Caesar. And I don’t just say that because I find the Mata Hari thing ridiculously appealing. I’m saying it because Caesar totally deserves to be killed by a girl.”

“Et tu, boobies?”

They shared some smiles and laughs. Even Boone grinned a big grin. Then he pulled the flap of his pack. Showed them the Stealth Boy. “You could walk right up to his fucking throne,” he said. “Bam.”

Arcade and Veronica stopped smiling all at once. They looked at one another’s faces, and then at the courier, whose grim expression had endured the entire conversation.

“No, Craig," the courier said. "I forbid it.”

...

In light of that line of thinking, his weird mood, his suicidal undertones, Arcade kept a close eye on Boone for the next couple of days. The courier had used the Stealth Boy more than him and showed no sign of authentic paranoia. He had always been that way, so far as Gannon had known him. And he had reason. But what if it affected them differently?

Arcade placed Craig Boone under close scrutiny. Though he came to realize he wasn’t sure he understood the man to begin with.

They were plodding their way around a canyon switchback when Boone, walking point, just up and stopped. The others started to walk on, but Craig lingered.

Quick to suspect something wrong, Arcade said softly, “What’s up?” He looked into the impassive, sunglassed face.

Boone said something that Arcade asked him to repeat. But sure as the first time, the answer was: “Owls.”

Yes. Definitely. Definitely the first crack in Boone’s sanity.

Then Boone motioned fractionally with his chin. Arcade looked.

In a scratchy scrape beneath the a cactus patch, a family of burrowing owls peered out stupidly at the human beings.

Boone smiled and said, “Heh.”

Heh.

...

The first bounty was a fluke. The courier never meant for it, and he never knew. They were cutting a back path across some creosote flats when the clamor reached them. Dogs barking, a man screaming, someone beating on a tin for dinner.

They came out of the setting sun to a cluster of dented trailers and the rank smell of dog feces. Slavering mongrels fought each other over a bloody femur. Then the first of the curs raced across toward the gang intent on attack.

Boone’s rifle cracked and the mongrel fell midleap, but there were so many, and that mangy whore Violet came out with her weapon crooked over her arm.

They ducked behind the trailers in between shots, but the fiend’s rifle left clear holes in their cover. Arcade decided that two could play this game; instead of aiming his shots like Boone, he let the Ripper cut through the trailer toward the sound of the rifle.

The courier and Veronica held off the dogs that came too close, but the courier lost a machete in one tough-boned cur and couldn’t pull it out again. He started to wind up one of the nasty dog chains around his hand to use as a flail.

Just then one of the stinking monsters broke through and grabbed Arcade by the coat—thank God, it was all coat, and the beast gave a mighty, slobbery shake. Arcade shouldered out of his coat and threw it over the animal, just as Veronica dove in and cracked its spine with a blow from her gauntlet.

“Oh, Veronica, really? Really?” Arcade whined. A dead dog killed inside his lab coat, amazing.

The courier struck out with the chain and dropped one of the dogs with a pitiful yelp.

Then Boone swung around the trailer and Violet’s throat exploded. When they combed over the scene a couple of minutes later, when the courier called all clear, the fiend woman’s dirty blouse was completely red black.

There were still two or three living dogs. Snarling, whining, starved skeletons straining viciously at the end of their chains.

The courier shot them. Veronica put her hand on his arm. There was no way to save them.

Arcade found someone still alive in one of the grisly trailer kennels, a young man in a filthy NCR uniform. His mauled hands and arms continued to shield his face. “No, no, no,” he moaned, half-delirious. Arcade later learned he had been chained here to feed the dogs.

“We’ve got to get him out of here, or he’ll die,” Arcade told the gang in private. His eyes met the courier’s. “The closest is McCarran.”


	9. Chapter 9

Arcade Gannon never thought he would enter McCarran in any other way than cuffed and blindfolded, maybe in the middle of the night, maybe through some secret passage. He never dreamed of a compelling reason to tempt fate otherwise.

Yet the fiend’s prisoner would die if he didn’t receive medical attention. Arcade did the best he could, but even now, the soldier stumbled, weak and delirious, growing more and more quiet. Arcade had given him water, cleaned the wounds as best he could, kept them bandaged and elevated, but he had lost a lot of blood. Besides the injury that Violet inflicted on him, he contended with animal bites and dirty living conditions. There were no other options for the man at this point.

“We’re almost there, son,” the courier said, as they came up on the last string of ruined buildings before the approach to the old airport. “Arcade, Boone, take him on ahead. I’ll catch up with you. Veronica, a minute, please.. “

Arcade looked him over. Was he hurt? He’d been paying attention to the soldier the entire time—did he miss something? The courier caught his eyes and nodded slightly; Arcade didn’t know how to take that.

“Come on,” Boone grunted. They went on their way, trying to get the soldier to stumble along with them.

After about two minutes, the courier limped back up. He was quick when he had to be. Veronica and ED-E did not follow.

...

Soldiers came running out to them.

Arcade knew they were coming for their comrade, but a shock of fear went through his system. He steeled himself. They wouldn’t know. No one knew, not here, anyway. He hadn’t told anyone in more than fifteen years. He’d learned his lesson. No one knew.

No one knows, he kept telling himself, kept thinking it, up until the soldiers closed the distance.

Then his training kicked in and the rest went by in a blur. Him and Boone wrangling the injured to the medical tent, talking with the doctors (“I already gave him a dose, if we give him any more, his blood pressure would drastically lower”). Now that they have the man out on a table, they work together to cut his uniform off his body, the fabric soiled and reeking of torture and canine feces.

The left arm was ruined, as Gannon suspected. Gangrene would take his life if they didn’t take the limb.

Have you ever done one of these before?

Arcade nodded.

I’m glad you’re here, the medical officer said, as he drew out his bone saw. Would you mind assisting?

...

He knew the young man would die. It had become a question not If but Where. On a cold pragmatic level, the courier knew that coming to McCarran was in error. An unnecessary risk for no real gain.

Yet he felt that familiar weight of shame, and he wore it around his shoulders as heavy as his tattered coat. He remembered the mercy of the Mormons and the honor of the soldier he used to be. It wasn't right to let that boy die in filth. At least bring him back here so he could die among his brothers, among his own people.

Gannon was going to try to save him. The man seemed destined for lost causes.

The courier went away from the medical tent with Boone for his shadow.

"We might be here for a couple hours," he said. His voice cracked at first, so he cleared his throat and continued, "and you don't need to show me around. Perhaps you have some business here, or some old friends?"

"Not a good place for Veronica."

"No, it isn't, that's why I asked here to stay behind. You understand."

"Not a good place where you left her."

Oh.

"It was better than here," the courier replied. "And she has ED-E with her." He drew back his sleeve enough to show the dim screen. "ED-E's still within range, so I'll know if anything happened."

Craig's chin went down slightly-- he was looking at the screen-- and then the black lenses came up. He still wore them even as the eastern skies darkened. "Want to check on her. If that's ok."

The courier nodded. He wondered how much of it was concern. How much of it the desire to get away. People knew him here. They would stare-- were staring already. They would ask questions. They would tell him how sorry they were. Craig didn't need that.

He came to the strange realization that out of their little group, only Veronica truly wanted to come to McCarran. She was curious. She was also a scribe in the Brotherhood of Steel and dressed like one.

No matter that it was only a small chance that anyone would do more than ask her a few questions. It was more a chance than he wished to take, not on her life or wellbeing. And he knew how they questioned.

Let her sit out there in boredom and heat with water to drink and a robot for company. And he'd left her a book to read.

...

It was just a camp far from their home. They were just tired soldiers plodding back to their bunks. He remembered the relief of shouldering off your weapon, shucking off your armor. Climbing onto your bedroll at last. As much as he dreaded coming into McCarran, he felt a stray stab of memory as he limped along the rows of tents. He could almost imagine Charley jaunting out of one of the tents, could almost hear him whistling.

A red beret with a goofy walk went by him. A tall young man with dark skin peeping out behind his scarf. "G-g-good evening," the young fellow stammered out. The courier nodded. He thought: young, awkward. A stage he won't grow out of yet. A few more kills will harden him. Prodigious talent. Has to be good to wear that beret.

"Hey, y-y-yyuh.. yum.. you looking for.. c-can I help you, mister?"

The courier almost smiled. "No, thank you, son."

Half on his way, he saw a skittering movement between the tents some distance ahead. Her again, with the frayed blonde hair--

"Wait a minute," a woman's voice said.

He turned around--

 _the demon shimmers in the dark of a tent just by his left side, her eyes glowing, her teeth sharp and wicked_

"You the old man with Boone, took Nelson back?"

The woman soldier had a hoarse bark of a voice. Wore black lenses like Craig, and a red beret.

"I was there," the courier said.

 _Carla runs her long fingernails over her tear-stained face, pulling down her lips from rotten gums_

"Major wanted to talk to you," the woman soldier said. He was still learning their rank insignias. This one was a corporal.

they're going to get you, Carla hisses-- this is where you die

The gawky young man looked between the two of them, and then he came in closer. Pushed up his shoulder strap. "I'll sh-sh-show you where to go, mm-mister," he said.

"Whatever." The cold black lenses flicked away.

"We hh-h-heard about what you did!"

 _we all know what you did_

Christopher Sly smiled. "Then I have kept him waiting long enough."

...

"We did the best we could," the medical officer said. "Sepsis would have taken him anyway."

Arcade wiped a bloody hand through his hair. "We shouldn't have taken the limb. He'd lost too much blood."

"Then he would have died of gangrene. You saw his hand."

"I've seen a case ," Arcade argued disjointedly, "where restored blood flow eventually allows for healing, his body was just--"

"One case out of how many?" The medical officer shook his head. "Thank you for bringing him back to us. You made that bitch pay."

Arcade thought of the crazed woman, her drugs, her dogs, her horrible kennel of Old World campers. It didn't feel like a victory, like any accomplishment. As he washed up, he studied the graying body on the table. The young man cried when they sawed his arm off. Now the arm was half-in, half-out of a bucket near the table leg, just a thing now, just meat.

He had undertaken dozens of surgeries before, and at least half a dozen amputations. Some successful. Some not. He kept thinking now, as he walked away into the rows of tents, that coming here was more a mistake than he first thought.

That boy might still be alive if they had sheltered him, let him drink water, revive. Maybe Arcade could have found some painkillers in the fiend's stash somewhere-- no. No, he told himself. An injection like that would have killed him all the same. He was in no state.

Now he had just come to camp McCarran for no good reason. Grateful for the sight of a limping shape, Arcade started off toward a smattering of tents, only to find a group of red berets settling into a card game.

He must have mistaken the old corporal for the courier. Same raggedy walk. Arcade tried to turn away from this awkward dead-end when one of the snipers spoke up.

"Hey, you, y-you looking for your f-f-friend? He was w-with the m-m-mmajor."

A surprisingly friendly face peered at him from behind half a scarf.

Then the old corporal-- too old for a corporal!-- said, "Thought I saw them finishing up. Head right and look for the blue truck, son."

Arcade nodded. "Thank you, I'll just, uh.. "

Sterling smiled thinly. "No, thank you folks," he said. The hands that held his cards were mangled hands.. "Sounded like those legion bastards didn't even know what hit them."

...

"He died."

"Yeah."

Arcade noted that the courier did not look surprised. Maybe he had seen it on the doctor's face as he hitched his way up. Or maybe he had known it wasn't going to work. "We-- the medical officer and I-- decided to try to amputate. Uh. I should have argued against it."

"We didn't have any good options, Arcade. He died here among his own. That's what matters."

"He died not really knowing where he was. He just cried, and couldn't believe we were sawing off his arm."

"Those wounds were turning sour. He would have died from blood poisoning if you left it."

Arcade sighed. "There was still a way. I let the medical officer make the decision and I shouldn't have. I mean, I knew the patient's situation only about a half hour longer than he did, but still, I knew more about what was going on and I shouldn't have--"

"Arcade."

"It was a mistake all around. A one armed soldier? There goes his livelihood, what was I thinking.. "

"I had a soldier lose an arm. He did fine. He turned out to be the best quartermaster I ever had."

Arcade started to open his mouth, but the calm steady eyes of the courier brooked no more argument.

"You tried to save him. He understands that now. You don't want to be here, you're nervous, and everything now seems terrible," the courier said outright. He reached out and placed a bandaged hand briefly on Arcade's bare arm, right where the sleeve rolled up. "I don't want to be here. Boone either. So, we'll go, and when we're all together again, I've got good news. First, I need to know if there's a better place for us to stay nearby than the El Rey Motel."

"I don't exactly hang around here," Arcade replied, "but from the way I hear it, any place is better than El Rey.. " He was grateful for a change of topic as much as a change of scenery. Some wild panicked voice in the back of his head wanted to know what the courier meant by that, though, what does he mean I'm nervous? How does he know? I'm not nervous. Why would he think..

"Then where for the night?"

"Well, there's fiend territory all around here.. and then there's, you know, here." Arcade sighed. It did make sense, but. "There's got to be some extra space in some of these tents."

The courier led back to the gate. "No thank you," he replied, fishing around in his long pockets. "In any case, we should get back to Veronica."

"Why did you leave her and ED-E out there, by the way?"

"Boone's with them now." What he removed from the pocket was a single bottlecap.

"Yes, but."

"I'll explain later."

The courier set the cap on a sandbag as they passed. They left McCarran and stepped out into the night.

...

"ED-E should be linked into my Pip Boy," the courier said as they picked across the rubble. "I don't know how far away it will still work, but I haven't seen anything unusual show up on my screen."

"What did the major want? Was that who asked for you, back in Novac?"

Arcade had a paranoid idea where the courier led him away into some dark cactus patch where armed rangers awaited him. Then he wondered if the Stealth Boy was actually getting to him instead. Or if he was just tired. And the courier could be secretive. Made you think he was up to something. Usually he was. A good way, but still--

The courier was saying something about a bounty.

"I'm sorry," Arcade said.

"Do you need water? We can take a break." The courier looked him over. "I filled my canteen back in McCarran."

"You said the major offered a bounty."

"Yes. It turned out that the fiend woman was notorious." The courier's bent fingers worked the lid of the canteen, and then he pressed it into Arcade's hands. "There was a considerable bounty on her. The major said they normally needed the head for proof, but he paid out in full on account of us not even knowing about the bounty, and because we had helped Camp Nelson. A little extra for Nelson as well-- and what's owed for this portion of Boone's pension."

Arcade felt a rush of absurd, stupid relief. Why would he think the bounty was about that. Why did he always assume something had to do with himself. As he drank from the canteen, a verse from the Old Testament sprung to mind: the wicked man fleeth when no one pursueth. "I think I remember now," he said slowly. "The woman's name was Violet. I remember there being something about a fiend with vicious dogs. Mostly you hear about this one called Cook-Cook."

The courier nodded. "We'll talk about that with the others," he said. "Better?" He pointed his chin toward the canteen.

"Yeah. Thanks." He screwed the lid and handed it back. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just. A rough night."

"I understand," the courier said gently. "I know you're tired. I hate to tell you that we've got some walking left to do. We'll get the others and head on to Freeside. That's about an hour's walk at my pace, do you think? And then we'll call it a night?"

"That sounds like a good idea." Arcade didn't want to sleep in bunk beds in the middle of Camp McCarran. He was glad it wasn't even an option. "But aren't you. Uh. Aren't you worried about venturing back toward the Strip?"

"We won't go to the Strip-- not that they'd let us in! Just to Freeside. We've been there before. You know I like those drinks that Francine Garrett mixes.. "

"Yeah, but we haven't been back since.. well.. since you became a little higher profile. Now the Chairmen might know you're still alive, that you helped out those Khans he doublecrossed.. "

The courier smiled. "I've thought about that," he answered. "But you know what? I was thinking tonight.. I have no reason to fear the Chairmen." The smile was a slow dawning smile.

Hearing Veronica's voice from the ramshackle building ahead, Arcade shook his head ruefully. "Well, now you've got Murder Machine, and a little woman with crazy gorilla strength."

"Exactly," the courier replied.

You could hear Craig's voice too, more the tone than words.

Veronica was saying, "Calm down, Boone, he's your friend. He's your friend, okay?"

"Hello, children, we're home," the courier said. "What are we fighting about?"

Boone's black lenses turned on them. "You had this Enclave piece of shit with us the entire time!"

...

Arcade's heart stopped.

His spine turned to ice.

From a distant place he heard the courier say, "Yes, Craig, but he can't hurt you. It's all right."

Veronica's stance was more sarcastic, half-pleading, her canteen in one hand as she motioned. ED-E huddled in a defensive ball just over her right shoulder blade. She rolled her eyes like a mother or wife being embarrassed in a restaurant. "Boone just found out that the obviously Enclave eyebot is an Enclave eyebot, and now he's freaking out-- you're freaking out, Boone, okay? There's no reason to freak out."

ED-E beeped pathetically.

"And you're scaring ED-E. He doesn't understand, ok?"

Boone looked between the four of them, mouth slightly open. "You knew," he said, when the sunglasses stopped on the courier. There was an edge of betrayal to his voice, a pitiful twinge to his blunt expression.

"Yes, Craig, I knew what ED-E was when I decided to fix him. One of the other couriers found him out on the side of the road. No telling how long he'd been there. He's not spying on you, or any of us. He's helping us. He's part of our team now."

Boone looked between the machine and the courier. "How do you know it's not spying on us? It could be recording everything. Marking out things. For them."

The courier made a calming motion with his hands. "It doesn't work that way, Craig," he replied. "Veronica can explain it much better than I can. How ED-E's brain works."

"You're giving him way too much credit," Veronica stepped in. "Look, you've watched a holotape, right? You know how one tape can only hold so much? And that's not much. ED-E's brains are like that. He can only hold so much and then he has to overwrite it. Most of ED-E's power is reserved for physical processes like, you know, moving around. Flying around. Heck, it takes a lot for him just to hover like that all the time. He's not some evil mastermind. He's not plotting our doom. He's not really thinking about anything."

Then she smiled a little. "Except, maybe, he's thinking what he could have possibly done to make you so mad. Looook at him."

ED-E beepled.

Boone was silent for a moment that felt like Arcade to be forever. An eternity of cold sweat, and a distant prickly sensation. "Why didn't you say anything."

"I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea," the courier replied. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth. I didn't want to talk about it."

"Why would you have something like that."

"You know I like old things, Craig." The courier reached out with a bandaged hand and placed it on ED-E's side. "And ED-E is useful to us. Think of all those nights he stood watching over us. Or those landmines he warned us about. And not to mention you found a way to make him play the radio."

Boone pressed his lips very tight together in a line.

"I asked Veronica and ED-E to stay behind when we went into McCarran tonight. I didn't want anyone to see them and get the wrong idea. We know they don't mean trouble, but it might look very different to the NCR. I can't control how they would react.. but one thing I could control was who came with us tonight. I'm sorry you had to wait out here alone and bored, Veronica, but it was for the best."

"Don't worry about it, Mister Chris. Me and ED-E had our little Hated Faction sleepover." She patted the eyebot's whiskers. "I would probably have been fine, by the way. I mean, after all, the NCR and the Brotherhood have worked together in the past for the greater good, right? Taking out Navarro, for one." She poked the eyebot. "Sorry, ED-E. Friends?"

Boone refused to be mollified. "Enclave was evil," he said flatly. "Experiments on people. Killing people. Cutting them up, making them sick."

"It was complicated," the courier replied. "Yes, they did evil things. Terrible, evil things, but not everyone was like that.. but I refuse to stand around here in fiend territory discussing these things. We can talk about it in the hotel, Craig, tomorrow, over hot breakfast, after we've all slept. It's my treat. It's an hour walk, but it will be worth it."

"You one of them?"

"No."

"Were you?"

"No, Craig. Look me in the eye. And take off those damned sunglasses, before you trip over something in the dark."

Boone slowly reached up and withdrew the black lenses from his sorely bloodshot eyes.

"If I deactivate this robot, he's going to be dead weight. He's heavy. You'll have to carry him. I'm not going to make Veronica or Arcade do it." The courier stared hard now that he could see the man eye to eye. It was like an old dog putting a pup in its place. Tough love. "He's the only one of us who can see in the dark. He's got an extra weapon. He doesn't run of out ammunition and he doesn't need to reload. I know you disagree with the people who created him, but he's ours now. Even if he recorded bits and pieces of his time with us, there would be no one to report to. They're all dead, Craig. The NCR won."

"Thought we could trust him," Craig said.

"We still can. Now come off it, Sergeant Boone."

"I'll be watching him."

The courier reached out and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "He'll be grateful for the attention. Now let's get going. It's late, we're all tired, it's been a hell of a day. Gannon looks like he's going to fall over."

...

The courier liked the Atomic Wrangler for a reason he could not quite determine. Francine's drinks, maybe. The strange charisma of the Garrett twins. The food was surprisingly good. The odd assortment of characters you found in the establishment. The whole place was faintly tacky yet completely honest.

ED-E's revelation didn't sit well with Craig. Arcade, either, though it had to be something that the doctor suspected from the beginning. He had never cared for the machine. The courier tried to fight down his frustration. Some young whelp like Craig couldn't begin to understand the Enclave.

That was unfair. Craig couldn't cope with betrayal. He wanted and needed things to be plain to see.

The courier waited until mid-way through their meal to share the news with the others. He made sure that they got to take the edge off their hunger. The meal of the night was said to be roast beef, though Arcade gave a dour speculation on a supplement of feline or rodent origins. Didn't matter-- the horseradish sauce was completely authentic and there wasn't a dry eye at the table.

"Here's what owed to you for your pension, Craig," the courier said as he drew out a small sealed packet. No weight to it, no jingle. NCR currency most likely. "The major handed it to me himself. He spoke highly of you."

When Boone sat to eat a meal, he always dropped his arms around the plate like he was protecting what was his. He still held his knife and fork, and he chewed slowly, though his eyes moved to the courier after a moment. The whites were blood-tinged. Boone hadn't worn the sunglasses again tonight since the courier banned them, but the way Craig squinted made him think against it. Ah, well. They were all tired, and after their meal and a bath, they could all rest as long as they wanted. There was no place to be just yet. No place to go. The courier used his allotment to take out rooms for each of them for at least two days.

"In addition to that, and to the rest of you," the courier continued, "you will find in your own envelopes your share of the bounty on that fiend's head. And for Camp Nelson. The major insisted on thanking us for the aid that we rendered there. The lieutenant at Nelson wrote profusely about the help that you and Arcade provided, Veronica. And of course there is a story going around on how Craig Boone killed and ate at least a hundred legionaries."

Boone laid down his knife very slowly and placed it by his mashed potatoes. Then he reached out to touch a greasy fingertip to the paper packet. He brought it in. "Major Dhatri?"

The courier nodded. "Of First Recon. Yes. He asked for you back, by the way.. but I won't give you up." He smirked. "Not without a fight, anyway."

Craig set the packet by his glass of lemonade.

"I know you're tired, but you can rest soon for as much as you like. Please do. But I want you to think about my proposition. There are two bounties that remain. Two very hideous individuals. Driver Nephi and Cook-Cook. Murderers, cannibals, rapists. I've decided.. " The courier's lips twitched in a smile, like he was holding it back. Then he made no effort to do so, and that little chip flashed as he spoke. "I've decided I'm going to kill them. I'm going to put an end to their nonsense and I invite you to join me. On the way up here I've already thought out how I want to do it. I know it will work. You're under no obligation to do so.. but I think we could do good things together. Think about it. Sleep on it and tell me tomorrow. I don't want to hear your answer before then. Don't try to talk me out of it, either. I've already made up my mind."

Veronica was still stuck staring at the packet of NCR money on the table. "I don't know, Mister Chris. Are you sure you want to do that?"

"I used to do it all the time."

Her eyes slid to their corners, as though trying to catch Gannon's attention, but he'd been off all evening. Veronica was trying to think of a polite way to broach the subject. Of course he wasn't as good as he once was.. but he was older, smarter now. He had cunning. He had a way around. "What made you want to go from mail delivery to, um, bounty hunting?"

The courier smiled. "Sometimes," he said. "The messenger is the message."


	10. Chapter 10

The courier thought he saw someone sitting on the bed when he opened the door into the darkness of his room. But when he turned on the light there was nothing but a lumpy mattress, a patched-up bedspread, and a weird stain on the wall that suggested the shape of a seahorse.

ED-E hovered in and clicked softly over the interior of the room. Its whiskers flicked once and again. If you wanted to personify it-- as the courier often did-- you might think that the eyebot was in a quiet melancholy. Earlier, it had mustered up a little interest in the Garrett twins, floating over to pay them a visit, but now it drifted listlessly about the room.

The courier threw his long coat over a chair, pulled the seat under him, and just sat for a moment as he stared at his boots. Tired yet energetic. Full of vim and vigor again. Something about strolling through McCarran. He'd gone from mind-numbing, nail-biting panic to exhausted hilarity.

He took it as a sign from the Trickster. He was finally stumbling onto the path he was meant to be.

But he could not forget where he came from.

He looked at his outstretched legs, his pitiful boots. They were going to be a bitch to untie. Even Veronica cut up his dinner tonight.

Small steps, he thought.

With a sigh, he surveyed his room. He considered sleeping with his boots on. Then his eyes moved to the adjoining door. Francine had given him and Arcade adjacent rooms, as with Veronica and Boone.

After a moment, he planted the soles of his boots on the floor and went over. Better check on Gannon.

...

Arcade rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, took down his hands, said flatly, "Are you?" He looked different without his glasses.

Not knowing what he meant, the courier replied, "Yes, I am, don't try to talk me out of it. I know what I'm doing."

With a tired slightly petulant _No, Stupid_ sort of look, Arcade sighed and said, half-whispered, "Are you from the Enclave?"

That.

"I said I wasn't."

Arcade studied him for a long minute. He looked exhausted, smelled exhausted, a little musky. He was starting to need a shave. He wasn't wearing his glasses or that flat lab coat-- it looked like he had started to undress for bed and then stopped to fret. His trousers ended in bare feet and the courier noticed long toes squeezing into the ratty carpet. "Because, I mean, I wouldn't turn you in or anything," he said. "I wouldn't tell anyone. You would probably have a good reason for, for whatever. I would hear your side of the story. You know me, Peter."

There was a tremor in Gannon's voice that he never heard before, and it made his heart stick in his throat. " _Pobrecito_ ," he said with a smile of chagrin. "You are really in a moral dilemma, aren't you?"

Gannon stared at him, dead serious. His own smile evaporated.

"I'm not. I'm in a strange position of knowing about them, though. One time-- it's a long story. What Craig said wasn't wrong.. but it wasn't right, either. Of course they were evil, but--"

Gannon croaked, "The experiments-- "

"I know. I know the Followers taught you every explicit detail. Let me finish! Yes. They did evil things. I'm no apologist. But you need to understand that not all of them were faceless, armored monsters who dropped in from vertibirds to kill vault dwellers. Not all of them were cruel scientists injecting babies. Or vicious politicians coldly deciding who lives and who dies. No. There were a lot of innocent people who lived in fear. A lot of very smart, very brave people who were told they were the very last survivors. In some ways they were.. a lot of expertise and knowledge lived on with them. And died with them."

Arcade shook his head and turned away, padding back to his bed. "I don't know what to say," he admitted in a shaky voice.

"Neither do I." The courier watched him, and then followed. He felt like a stone sat in his belly. "I'm sorry, Arcade. This troubled you all evening, didn't it?"

"It's just been a hell of a night." The bed squeaked when he slumped down.

The courier hesitated, and then he laid a bandaged hand on Gannon's head. "I know," he said, slowly stroking blond hair. "One thing after another. You did the right thing. Don't worry about Craig. He's the kind who needs things to be very clear cut. He doesn't like surprises. I'm sure ED-E will win him over."

"Yes, well. I suppose he could always flirt with James Garrett to make Boone jealous."

"It sounds like there's a story there."

In a bleak, weary voice, Arcade said, "Nothing that I as a trusted physician would be able to tell you in good conscience." His eyes were shutting.

"I think in a way, you just did."

Arcade smirked.

The courier drew the back of his fingers from Arcade's hair down to his temple, sliding a curve around his ear. Gannon plainly enjoyed it as much as he did, leaning into him. He wished they hadn't broken his fingers on top of everything else. He wanted to map the doctor's face, his body. A horrible idea. This was enough.

"Thank you," he said, after a long moment of hypnotic stroking.

Arcade muttered something. He rested a palm on the courier's hip, his thumb in the belt loop.

"For trusting me. If.. if I had been such a person, that would have been a very dangerous thing to admit to. I know that people have been killed on even less grounds for suspicion. The whole thing was a farce. The frightened housewives and boy scouts were captured, tortured, or detained indefinitely. The evil shadow government got away with handshakes and a gentleman's agreement."

Gannon grunted softly and opened his eyes. "What do you mean?" The tone in his voice made the courier stop. His hand stayed now on the nape of his neck.

"There were a lot of good brave people in a bad situation who died for their country. And they were put in that situation by a bunch of bastards who decided they didn't want liberty or death.. they wanted to live in a big house in California with electric lights and clean water. All they had to do was point their finger at a gas station in Navarro."

"A gas station in Navarro.. "

"That's where the survivors fled after the oil rig melted." The courier let his hand fall and for a moment he rested his arm across Gannon's shoulders. He gave a squeeze that way, a one-armed hug. "I won't keep you awake with any more history lessons. You seem to know enough already."

"The Followers have a lot to say about what happened after the war, but history," said Gannon in a wry and weary tone, "is written by the victors." He looked exhausted, even as he pressed off the bed to stand. "You'll have to tell me how you learned all that. Did you ever.. know any of them?"

"Yes, I came to know a few," the courier replied, "but only after they were dead. I was sorry I arrived too late to save them."

...

Arcade leaned his elbows on his knees in a too-short porcelain bathtub. He half-heard weird sounds emanating from the room below him. A woman with an obnoxious laugh. Someone whinnying like a horse.

He stared at peeling wallpaper.

 _All they had to do was point their finger at a gas station in Navarro._

For years, decades, Orion Moreno contended that they were betrayed. Was it true? What had really happened on his father's last mission? Did Daisy keep something from him? How did Peter know all of this? Didn't he understand how dangerous it was to even talk about it?

...

The next morning, a late morning, Veronica lounged around in a faded red-pink mens nightwear set she had bought herself just an hour prior. The courier had said she needed new clothes, after all. Who would suspect a Steel Brother in such comfortable lounge attire. She had to put a safety pin in the hip to keep her pants from falling down if she stood up too fast.

If the situation arose, she would have to refrain from showing any surprise. Just stand slowly, hands on hips, maybe drawl out, "Oh, realllyy.. "

She was determined to make the most of the morning. Bright and busy, she put her slippered feet up by Boone's plate of jalapeno eggs and quizzed him from her dogeared Housewife magazine. The slippers did not match, neither shape nor color, one of them a bedraggled monkey and the other a stained blue terrycloth thing.

Arcade was dressed cutely and messily in a white shirt and suspenders. The pants were tight enough to not need suspenders, though, and Veronica debated stealing them while he was asleep. Suspenders would be just a thing for her pajama problem right now. Gannon wouldn't even know-- he was completely passed out with his head on the table.

"Okay, this one is called, _Do you know how to please your man_?"

No response.

"This is your quiz, Craig. You need to be as honest as possible in your answers so I can tally the results."

Boone hunched over his plate like a junkyard dog over its bowl. ED-E hovered by his head, weebling softly for the merest shred of sympathy and attention.

"Okay. Question one. Which of the following home appliance best describes you. A, the oven.. "

"No."

"Lighten up, Boone. Okay? The world didn't end. You're going to drive yourself to an early grave. Anyway, don't you want to know how to please your man?"

"Not really my thing."

"Oh. Then you fail the quiz. That was quick, I guess. Don't worry, me too." She touched him with the toes of the monkey slipper. "We have so much in common!"

Boone pushed away his plate. In a desperate bid for attention, ED-E tilted an antenna onto his wrist. He swatted away the offending metal appendage.

The eyebot shrank back, and then floated defeatedly into the corner. The opening strains of _I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry_ began to play.

"Boone. Good grief!"

Francine Garrett herself marched up in her no-nonsense businesswear to pour them a new round of coffee.

"Thanks, Francine," Veronica said. "You've really made us feel like home." If home was a crazy hooker casino, but then, you know, that might be just the thing to put a little pep in the Brotherhood. She'd bring it up to McNamara.

"No problem, doll," Francine replied as she walked half away, paused, her head turning. "Say you don't seem to like that piece of junk much, mister.. think you'd sell it?"

Boone's sunglasses turned up. "Not for sale," he hissed.

"Hmm, all right, just," Francine said, a little too casual. "Just curious. Meant nothing."

Then Mister Chris came down the stairs, thump-thump, in that limping way he walked. He looked excited to see jalapeno eggs on the menu, a jar of fresh salsa, hot coffee, and Arcade in suspenders. Then he cocked an eyebrow at ED-E.

Boone pushed his boot into the leg of an empty chair, nudging out a seat for the courier. "Been thinking bout what you said."

"What's the verdict?"

"I'm in."

The courier grinned. "Good. I knew you would be."

"First Recon tried to get one of them before," Boone said. "Nephi. The one with the golf club. Distance shot didn't work on him. Uses the other ones for shields. Then he gets up too close."

"Then we will succeed where the others have failed."

Veronica wiggled her open toes in the blue terrycloth slipper. "What do you think of my new outfit, Mister Chris?"

"I think you ought to take your feet off Miss Francine's table. Those trousers are too loose on you.. "

"Gack. Sorry. I have this safety pin though."

The courier took his seat, looked among them, and then reached out to brush a bit of scrambled egg out of Arcade's hair. "I was going to go with Cook-Cook first, as the biggest and meanest of all three, but Driver Nephi.. well. We'll get them all the same."

Veronica folded up her quiz. "So, do you have some kind of crazy plan on how to do this?"

"Did you ever doubt?"


	11. Chapter 11

“So there I was,” Driver Nephi roared, “takin’ a huge ole piss, when some First Recon pussy takes a shot at me. Pussy-ass been hiding all day, hiding like a bitch, pro’lly pissing in a jar somewhere—“

The fiends laughed and drank in the campfire glow of the South Vegas ruins.

"Went right in here," Nephi sneered, sticking a dirty finger into his helmet. Wiggled his finger in the goat skull hole. "Came out the other side.”

Penny burst into odious little giggles, scampering round the campfire on filthy all fours. "Came out the other siii-ii-yyiide," she sing-songed while Driver Nephi told the story. The fiends all loved the story, the old ones, and the new, all drinking, laughing around the fire.

The red hats thought they'd catch Nephi wrong. Catch him taking a piss. But he held his pecker in one hand and his driver in the other. "They shot and shot but I ran right at em, and they jump up run away. Fuckin cowards. Fuckin pussies. All they do's hide. You come swingin they go runnin. Ran like lil girls."

El Chupacabra laughed a mean laugh. He was the alpha of the new fiend pack, a nasty, dirty son of a bitch scarred all to hell, dressed in a crazy mish-mash of armor. Little bones and beads braided into his huge frazzled beard. He only talked in Mexican, and said something over the edge of his flask.

“The boss says the red berets are all cowards," said the one with the gas mask, the one who gave them the pills. He wore just that gas mask, a loincloth, and a cat skull hanging from his belt. Lots of blond fuzz otherwise. Long legs, looked like a fast runner. “They shoot from far away. They don't fight up close, like real men.”

"Yeah. Yeah. Fuckin' pussies.” The goat skull wobbled when Nephi nodded. He waved the head of the golf club. "You got it.”

“You know they catch some red hats," Zitpopper said. “Cook-Cook catch some but they get away." He smiled a sleepy smile with the teeth he had left. The light of the fire was orange on his pockmarked face.

“Cook-Cook's got more’n us, how the fuck they get away?" Nephi shook his head. “Had em right where he fuckin wanted. Whatever. His game, he can do what the fuck he wants with his game. I'da, they wouldn't have got the fuck away.”

Gurgle laughed. “Maybe they taste like shit. Not going to eat that.”

Penny scampered around in circles again, laughing, panting. “Cook-Cook catched him the lady one, dick her reaaalll goood,” she hissed. “I gets to watch whoooole time, sogood, mmm-hmm. Yep. Dick her so much, s’ no more for Penny.” She sighed a big sigh.

The big one grunted. Big son of a bitch, bald. Didn’t say much. Dumb as fuck, prolly. Name of _Bone_. He was a big fiend buck with paint and ashes smeared all over his body. Big son of a bitch, thick as a wall. Wearing underwear, boots, a big hunting rifle with a belt of ammunition. Just that. Some kind of thing on his arm. One of those vault things maybe.

"Fucking First Recon.” Nephi rolled his eyes.

“They got Scab, though," Gurgle grunted. "Got him gut shot." He tilted his leg sideways a little to let out a fart. God damn, Gurgle.

“But we trade Scab body," Penny said, mostly to the new fiend Princess, grinning with her gooey sore gums. "Cook-Cook give us goooood shit.”

Princess grinned back and took a slam of whatever drink it was they passed between them.

"Cook Cook dick him in the, in his bullet hole," Penny giggled. "He yelllllls whole time. You see his guts swoosh around, a gooey holdeses 'sit together. Unh." She bunched her hands open and shut. Made the smell of her hands worse when she brought them up. She'd used them to wipe herself when she got sick earlier. But the pills made her feel better now.

Everybody was feeling lots better after the pills. The new fiend pack-- they got good pills. Chupacabra was all right. Gas mask handed them out what seemed like hours ago, was it hours? Maybe? Gift for passing through their territory. Sit awhile and talk. You had to sit down, after those. Some good shit there, make you dizzy as hell.

The bitch Princess was a good looking thing, even better than Penny when Penny still had all her teeth. Creamy skin beneath the paint, like she never went out in the sunlight. Looked more like a wild tribal than a fiend type. Maybe a new fiend. This Chupacabra guy maybe hadn't had her for long. They get rotten, more time goes on. So you gotta use em while you can. Bone kept glancing over at her. She kept glancing on back. Maybe something between them. Chupacabra better keep an eye on that shit. A firm hand.

Nephi was watching her while Chupacabra talked again. Didn't matter, he didn't know Mexican, so he looked back to the one with the gas mask.

“The boss wants to know if this is all your gang."

"Yeah, me, Gurgle, Zit, Penny, Stinker, the Twins, Goater, Ted, Dirty Ollie, and Catfuck."

Princess started to ask, "Why is he--"

Nephi snorted. “Hell if I know how he caught the damn thing. Zit, wake his ass up, make him tell the story.”

Zitpopper crabbed his skinny body over to the drooling lump of flesh laying by a pile of empty cans. He prodded at the man's shoulder with a foot of black toenails. “He’s out.” Dirty Ollie started to get ideas, you could see it on his face.

“Couldn't never hold his shit," Nephi grunted.

Penny giggled. “Good niiiii. Oh Gurgle. You smell so bad."

“Don't feel good," Gurgle grunted.

“Don't smell good." Penny oozed away from him and flopped down by Princess. “Hi! I sit by you now. Friends!"

Nephi snorted. Penny was half-covered in shit with no pants on. Crazy bitch. Still, she fought like a demon. Scratched some NCR fucker’s eyes out last month, was it last month? A while. Maybe. Killed him from the infection.

Gurgle let out a horrible sound.

"God daaaamn, Gurgle," Nephi barked. “You get the fuck away if you're going to do that.”

“Sorry, I don’t.. “ Gurgle grunted. “Don’t feel good.”

“Get the fuck out away and come back when you let that all out.” Nephi pointed with his club away from the fire. "You are fucking banished.”

Penny waved her arm and pointed too. “You are baaaaniished," she said in a dramatic voice.

Gurgle hunched over, like he couldn't straighten up to stand up so easy.

“Can't fucking believe it," Nephi told Chupacabra. "He can't handle his shit. Oh my God." Then he took his club and swatted a tin can at Gurgle. “Zit, take his ass away. Not in front of company. Jesus Christ. Nobody wants that.” Nephi scowled now at Penny. “You too. Get the fuck out.”

Penny took it hard. “Noo, but I want to stay," she whimpered.

"Sitting there with your fucking shit-ass.”

“My poo hurted but now I feel better," Penny whined.

“Get out, Penny. Go."

Penny began to cry. “I feel better now, I feel bet-terrr.”

Holy fuck. Acting up and shit, in front of company. Chupacabra was watching him.

"She feels better," Princess reasoned. “She can stay, I don't mind.”

El Chupacabra made a gesture with his hand. Said something.

"The boss says that he would like Penny to stay," the one with the gas mask said. Name was Skull something.

“ _Por favor_ ,” the fiend alpha said, about as much Mexican as Nephi knew. He grinned.

...

They drink awhile. Nephi can’t smell the smell after awhile, with the trash burning in the campfire, with the way his nose begins to run. Eyes blurry from the smoke, from pills. They drink and talk and laugh awhile.. Nephi is thirsty. His stomach starts to hurt. He forgets what they are talking about, his words fall out of his mouth one after another. Confused now, starting to get the idea that something is wrong?

Princess is petting the golf club, gently touching his hand around the shaft. A soft mechanical spinning sound. She smiles gently, a little sadly. White teeth. Her teeth are perfect.

The soft spinning sound. He thinks he knows what that means.

“You.. you poisoned us,” Nephi figures it out. “You poisoned us, you son of a bitch, you gave us bad shit.”

El Chupacabra smirks. “ _En cuanto estés listo, Craig._ "

Princess grabs the golf club out of his hand, and he stares all stupid for just a second. The spinning sound was the gauntlet she wears, and he jumps to his feet just as she reverses the golf club in her hands, end over end.

That big son of a bitch Bone disappears, right in front of Nephi’s fucking eyes.

With incredible strength, the little woman plunges the driver head-deep through his chest.

...

The fiends moved on pure adrenalin.

Confused, screeching mostly, crabbing around. The ones that hadn't succumbed to the pills that Gannon supplied them.

They had spent the whole day rehearsing what would happen. They trained worse for how it all turned out.

Boone and the courier took turns flashing in and out of stealth. Just as one of the fiends would close in for an attack. But important to keep at least one of the two visible at all times, so they didn't gang up on Arcade and Veronica.

ED-E had pretended to be junk this whole time and now it rose from the rubble with shots from its laser.

From a medical perspective, which was how Gannon forced himself to think—clinically—it was amazing how long the fiend Penny persisted. Given her body weight in comparison to some of the other heavier brutes, she shouldn’t have hung on as long as she did. Maybe her dosage wasn’t as potent. Maybe it was expired. They had walked back early that morning to salvage what they could of Violet’s nasty drug stash.

The courier's plan had been simple. Vile. Insane.

It didn’t take long to clear out the camp. It didn’t seem possible. But they were all dead and accounted for, as “Bone” and “Chupacabra” went through and checked all the hidey-holes, all the cover, just in case one of them got away.

They found that one Gurgle laying off in a pool of blood and his own filth, wide-eyed dead.

Arcade peeled the gas mask off his face. In a real situation it would have been useless, cracked, torn. It only served for effect, for all of their crazy costumes they put together. He didn't know how the Desert Rangers managed; the gas mask sloshed with sweat and he could hardly breathe in it. Nevertheless, he wore it to hide his nerd glasses. He couldn't have fought if he couldn't see.

"Good job, Skulldick," Boone said, as Arcade holstered his weapon. He felt slimy, disgusting, subhuman.

"Uh. That's _Doctor_ Skulldick, thank you. And for what it's worth I spent a lot of time on this costume."

When they were coming up with this whole scheme in the back room of the Atomic Wrangler, Arcade completely blanked on a fiend name when they got to picking them. But Boone, in his Boone flash of stupid genius...

El Chupacabra grinned. God damn, did he look insane in that getup. You would never recognize him. In that great big fatherly voice, he said, "I told you it would work, team," as he fired a round into an unconscious body to make sure that it was dead. "You see what we can accomplish when we believe in ourselves?"

Arcade put his hands on his hips.

"Don't stand like that, Arcade."

The cat-skull codpiece spoke for itself.

This was where Princess Veronica might have made a joke, but she looked nervous, shaky. She kept brushing her hair out of her eyes-- they got to see her hair for once-- and this usually meant in a female that they were nervous.

“This is all just terrible, and I feel terrible,” Arcade said with a disgusted little laugh.

The courier gave him a flat look. That look that meant, I'm stopping this right now. “We all make choices, Arcade. This is what they wanted. I reserve my sympathy for those who deserve it. You did well.”

Boone balanced his rifle on his arm. “They killed a lot of people. Good people. Hurt more. One guy Nephi hit. Blind for life, can’t work.”

“I know. Just that humanity could sink to this. Wonderful.” Arcade shook his head, and then he pushed up his glasses. “Uh. I’ll get the bone saw and get started, then. Now we can prove it’s him.”

Veronica lingered by the bodies, looking at the faces slack in death. “I wonder how Penny got into all this. I guess she was a normal girl once.”

The courier shook his shaggy, nasty head. He had streaked it with bacon grease from the Atomic Wrangler's kitchen. “I remind you that she laughed the whole time Cook-Cook raped that woman. I don’t stand for that.”

“Yeah.”

The corpse of Driver Nephi lay crumpled half on its side with the golf iron sticking through it.

Arcade had performed countless autopsies as a doctor, and as a student. He had the tools, experience, and nerves to provide proof for the bounty in as efficient way as possible. In truth, he was wondering-- in medical curiosity-- if the brain of the fiend might be worth some study, but then, they didn't have the facilities out here in the Followers' dirty encampment. That and Julie Farkas would not be happy if he walked through the gates of the Old Mormon Fort with the head of Driver Nephi in his hand. Might be worth it, though, to see her expression.

He was just coming up with the bone saw when it happened.

Nephi sprang up and grabbed for Veronica with a horrifying last shriek, like an old horror movie, the not-dead-villain snatching at the innocent virgin.

Then you heard the earsplitting report of a rifle, and Driver Nephi's headless body fell away, while Veronica shrieked, splattered in red and pink.

Arcade blinked, holding the bone saw.

Boone said, "Shit."


	12. Chapter 12

Boone said he was sorry for blowing the bounty. Didn't mean to shoot the fiend's head off. Instinct. He saw the bloody hands grab onto Veronica and his hunting rifle moved all on its own.

"You did the right thing, Craig," the courier told him. "What would you rather have, Veronica bitten or hurt and a hand full of bottlecaps? Or Veronica safe and the satisfaction of having killed Nephi for good?"

"Should have made sure he was dead."

"That is my responsibility. Ultimately my responsibility. I've done this longer than you, and I should have known better. If you apologize again, I will be angry. Now! Lift his left foot, please."

They were still dressed like Bone and El Chupacabra, hoisting a headless body across the desert rubble. The courier had wiped off some of the paint, and Boone had pulled his beret back on.

"Just think that--"

"Sergeant Boone, didn't you just hear me say--"

Boone sighed.

"I learned my lesson, we killed all of Nephi's pack, and no one was hurt. Not even Veronica. In fact, by the time we get back to the Wrangler, a hot shower and a slice of pie will have put everything right."

Had a point.

Boone knew better than to try to push on the matter. Didn't know what he would say anyway. Some nameless feeling. Kept replaying in his mind over and over how it looked when that dirty son of a bitch jumped up with the golf driver through him. The flash of fear on Veronica's face. She was small when you thought about it. His hands would touch if he put them both round her waist.

Lieutenant Gorobets waited for them, like he said he would. It was dark by this time and Peter didn't see the squad right away, but Boone knew the lay of the land. He remembered their old firing positions for the outer defense of McCarran. Remembered sitting behind two huge tractor tires shoulder to shoulder with Manny, waiting for some shit to happen.

"Mister Sly, that you?" Gorobets called. He came out alone to meet them, but Boone saw the dim shape of the rifles at the ready. Bitter-Root and Betsy were the ones he knew from before.

Peter Quince smiled. He was always using different names. Seemed everyone else was always a name or two behind. Boone knew he wasn't Peter but if that's what he wanted, didn't matter. "Good evening, lieutenant. We're back. Nephi's fiends are all dead, and here is the man himself."

As Gorobets came closer, he had exactly the expression on his face that Boone would have thought. Heh.

"What in the hell."

The courier played it cool, and they dumped the body on the ground as though it were just another delivery from the Mojave Express. "Driver Nephi, like I told you. All the others are dead."

The lieutenant made a flicker of his hand, and Corporal Betsy rose from the firing position and stepped out toward them. "Nice outfit, Craig," she said. "The caveman look fits you."

Boone grunted. "Betsy."

Gorobets just shook his head, letting out a low whistle. "I don't know what to say, Mister Sly. Got to admit I was having second thoughts after this morning, giving you the okay to face down Driver Nephi. What a crazy idea."

"Crazy enough to work," the courier said with a grin. "And that's good enough for me."

...

Gorobets walked them in to McCarran, and First Recon followed.

Ten of Spades offered up his scarf for Boone to wipe some paint off his face with. That was the kid's name. Ten of Spades. Short. Wore glasses. Stuttered a hell of a lot, talked a lot. Good enough kid. Must be new. Corporal Sterling was another one he didn't know. Too old to be a corporal. Looked like an ex-ranger. Wondered what that was about. An injury, maybe. Hurt bad. His hands all mangled up, and he limped along. Him and Peter looking each other over.

Betsy talked to him all the while. Catching up on camp gossip. Meaner than usual, and she was always mean as a snake. Good fighter, though. Her hard flat voice filled his ear as they went. Like she felt she had to talk about something.

He remembered what they talked about with the fiends. That bitch fiend laughing about Cook-Cook catching a First Recon woman. Impossible.

"What're you looking at?"

Nothing.

They left Driver Nephi's body at the gates for all to see. The courier wanted it spread around that the great fiend was killed by a little woman. He held up a bandaged hand to level out Veronica's height. Wanted it known she was 'this tall.'

"Figures," Betsy snorted. "A woman does it right and then a man goes and fucks it all up." Her steel toe boot thumped into the fiend's side. Mostly made the smell worse. "Good job, Boone, I see you're still the same kill-stealing son of a bitch."

The courier smirked. "We thought that was all for Driver Nephi, but his dead body jumped up and grabbed our girl. So Boone put him down again. A good shot, too, so quick and so close range. He meant well."

Something passed across Betsy's face but she clamped down. "Whatever," she said. "Lieutenant, do you need us for anything else?"

"The rest of you can go," Gorobets said. "I'll take you in to see the major."

...

"Well, I don't see why not, Curtis," the major was saying. "I'll approve your leave. I know you must miss your family."

"Thank you, sir," came the other voice inside the tent. "It has been too long."

Boone disliked Curtis. He had turned up four years ago with the new wave of reinforcements. He had just missed Boulder City and didn't have any patience or sympathy for anybody who'd been there.

Gorobets told them, "Wait here," and went in.

All the courier brought in was a handkerchief and his crazy painted self. Still had all the weird beaded beard, the bone bits and spiky armor. Probably why Gorobets wanted to walk them in himself, so they didn't get shot at.

Didn't want them to think an enemy just walked clean into McCarran.

"Good evening, major," the courier said. "Now I know you're busy, but I have something to put your heart at ease!"

He handed the handkerchief to Captain Curtis, who was standing nearest by, and Boone smirked because Curtis snatched it away to inspect it in his usual officious asshole way.

Then he dropped it right quick. Heh.

Major Dhatri just stared from behind his desk, his mouth slightly open in disgust. He was still puzzling out the courier's appearance. Boone, too. He felt the major's eyes yo-yoing between them. "What in the hell is that?"

"Sir, that is, ah, the head of Driver Nephi." Gorobets stood with his arms behind his back. "For the bounty."

"All I see is a jawbone," Curtis said, "and some kind of red pulp!"

"That's all that remains of Driver Nephi's head," the courier replied, "Our little lady killed him with his own iron, but he was on so many drugs, he didn't know he was dead. Sgt Boone had to sort him out."

Curtis glowered at him. "And who the hell are you?"

Major Dhatri stood up from behind his desk. "First of all.. get that.. thing, out of my space," he said with a sigh. "Second, Captain, this is Mister Christopher Sly of the Mojave Express. He's the one who helped take back Nelson."

"Why would a courier get involved in such a thing?" Curtis sounded almost pissed off that they had freed Nelson.

Dhatri waved his hand. "He was bringing in a delivery of radio parts. Him and Sgt Boone cleared out all those skirt-wearing sons of bitches. They came across Violet earlier, put her down, and brought back one of her victims-- the Geoffreys boy, who didn't make it. I told Sly that there's also a bounty on Nephi and, well, here's Nephi."

"The bounty was for a head with recognizable features. That.. pile.. could be anyone. You need to be able to recognize his face." Curtis kept looking at the courier in a way that Boone didn't like. Made him stand a little closer to Peter. "Or else you'll get all kinds of bounty hunters bringing in pieces of meat, telling stories, trying to grub for money."

The courier spread his bandaged hands and smiled that wily little smile of his. "You bring up a very good point, captain, and let me oblige you... "

Gorobets cut in with, "Major, sir, I know for a fact that is the head of Driver Nephi."

"I'll take you on your word, Sly, I'll trust you," Dhatri said, "but my superiors wanted proof for the bounties. You understand. In the future, if, uh, you go after any of the others, like that Cook-Cook bastard.."

"Of course, major! I didn't want it to come to this, buuut.. "

...

Word had gotten round camp in record time.

Boone ignored all the looks as he dragged the fiend's body by the distinctive golf iron.

He pulled it into the tent and dumped it by the major's desk.

All of the officers were standing around still talking, but the courier turned to him in his crazy El Chupacabra getup and beamed with pride. "Thank you, Craig," he said. "Well, gentlemen, wonder no more! Driver Nephi, at your service. It's been a pleasure doing business with you. Don't worry about Cook-Cook, he's next, and by the end of it you'll have no need to worry whether it was him or not."

"You'd better bring me his head, Sly," Dhatri groaned. "Just.. get out of here. Curtis-- you're dismissed. Lieutenant Gorobets."

Gorobets stood at attention. His face was stoic.

The major's eyes fell on the stinking headless corpse laying on the floor of his tent. It squelched a sick little sound when Boone yanked the driver iron out of it.

"Lieutenant. You stay."

...

"Heh. Major's gonna have his ass for dinner."

"Looks that way. Never fear. Every junior officer needs a good talking to. Builds character."

The courier grinned as they walked back through the ruins. Boone idly swung the driver iron. Knocked a can pretty far. "You talking from experience?"

The courier's grin widened.

Boone wanted more. "Got to be a story," he said.

Knew it was hard for Peter to talk about it. You saw on his face that he was thinking about what he wanted to say. Then he started off saying, "My first unit was what you might call.. a dry unit. But we had this secret still.. "

"Not for long."

"Not long enough," the courier said with a laugh. "The commander came in one day for a surprise inspection and, surprise.. "

"He found the still."

"He found the still. Thinking quickly I took into account the commander being raised a Mormon. Maybe, looking at this big clunky contraption, he wouldn't know what it was. So playing dumb I went as shocked as he was. Fucking hell! A robot has infiltrated the camp! Men, to arms!"

Boone grinned. "He didn't buy it."

"No, he didn't."

Boone turned the head of the golf club and motioned to the faded lashes that scarred into the courier's back. "That what got you whipped?"

"Oh, that was mostly from another time," the courier replied with a smile. "I also deserved that one."

"Same commander? The Mormon?"

"The same. Good commander, actually, but a bad man. And a bad Mormon, besides." The courier's voice softened, took on a wry tone. "I used to pray for his god to take him away. Please Prince Jesus, take him home. Take him back. Never worked. We were picking our way down a canyon trail once, and an arrow whizzed by.. struck him right in the throat. I saw him fall. We all thought that was the end of him.. but bastards like that never die, Craig. He jumped right back up. If there's one thing in life.. the good people suffer, and the bastards live forever."

Boone dragged the head of the golf club in the sand, watching it drag lines. "Had a bad lieutenant. Name was Gilles."

"The one from Coyote Tail Ridge."

Boone nodded. He could feel the courier's eyes on him, then, sad eyes beneath the gunshot scar.

He was waiting for more.

There was no more.

...

Veronica kicked back in a mangy terrycloth robe that in better days might have matched the color of her drink. James Garrett seemed to take a shine to her, and he had pushed back his sleeves and mixed her up something bright and fruity in a fountain-shaped glass. Watching him put the concoction together was almost as fun as taking it in.

Arcade was drinking the same drink, and this was his fourth.

By the time Boone and "Peter Quince" got back to the Wrangler, Veronica and Arcade were laughing about God knows what.

Veronica's head was lolling by now. She had her hair wrapped up in a towel like a beehive. "My numb is numb," she laughed.

"I'm not familiar with that part of anatomy," Gannon replied, half talking into the palm of his hand.

Veronica's eyes squeezed shut and she giggled, "My tonnngue. My tongue is numb."

"I hear ya, Princess. This elbow is a head kickstand right now."

The scribe seemed to find his turn of phrase hilarious. He didn't know why. Hey. They don't get out much in the Brotherhood of Steel.

Francine greeted Boone and Peter with, "Hey, they were just telling us what happened. That's the craziest idea I've ever heard."

"Crazy enough to work," said the courier, "and that's good enough for me."

The sight of a huge man painted like a fiend with a First Recon beret would have had a much different effect on a normal person, but Veronica was a girl who lived in a hole in the ground. She was happy to see Boone, and delighted, even, when he presented her that bloody golf driver.

"Oh, Boone, that's so thoughtful of you," she slurred, pink drink in hand. "Why don't you wash it off from the pump though."

Then she added, "Nono, you don' have to do that now. Si'down and have a pink."

Then she laughed. "Drink. Hurrhurr."

"Hey, it's not wrong!" Arcade smiled. What was in this thing. "Ay, Chupacabra! ¿Que pasa?"

The courier smirked as he came over. He looked crazy in his fiend getup. How did he manage to get all the way through McCarran and the Vegas ruins without getting shot. Que milagro. "Ha, estás borracho."

Arcade held his right thumb and forefinger apart just a hair. "Mmmmunnn poco. How'd it go with the NCR? Amazing you didn't get shot, walking in there like that."

A wolfish smile spread across the courier's face. A wink of the chipped front tooth. "Not only did I walk clear through the gates of Camp McCarran, I stood face to face with Major Dhatri and two other officers. Imagine that."

Arcade was too drunk and ignorant to put that together. Someday he did, a time too late.

Then the courier set a pouch upon the table, pushing aside a salt shaker and an empty ash tray. "Here is the bounty for Driver Nephi, paid in full. You've earned it. All I ask is you divide it among the team."

Veronica laughed as she flopped in her chair. "I'm good at math, but right now.. ?"

The courier smiled. "I'll double check you after I get out of the shower. Mister James, I'll have what they're having."

...

Many a pink was drunk that night.

Even Boone grunted "What the hell" and went along with it. James poured his drink into a beer stein, a man's glass, but even after a couple of those, he was flush-faced drunk, freshly showered in a tight white shirt.

At first, before it all went wrong, Arcade preferred Craig after a couple of drinks. It loosened him up. He looked more like any other soldier of twenty four, on leave, looking for trouble. Arcade thought it had been more a sense of accomplishment and adventure that changed Craig's mood. He hadn't realized the extent that the stealth device influenced him, not until what happened at Cottonwood Cove.

But the night of Nephi's defeat, the gang was all smiles. Good times. Boone and Arcade were trying to teach Veronica how to sing Whiskey in the Jar, but it turned out that the phrase "a-ringa ma-dooda ma da" plunged her into an asphyxiating fit of laughter.

Boone tried to get Arcade to sing "the jungle song," but he didn't know what he meant. Craig's repertoire of music was as extensive as it was puzzling. Where did it come from.

"What did you put in these?" Arcade asked of James Garrett, after his fifth.

James winked and said, "I slipped you a mickey."

Arcade let go of Garrett's sleeve like he was burned.

After the sixth, though, he didn't care about anything anymore and laughed like an idiot. He kept touching his glasses, feeling like they were going to fall off his face, and he felt incredibly tired and excited all at once. He was so hard that he felt like his erection dug into the table from underneath, like if he scooted out enough to look down, he'd find curls of wood shavings on his leather shoes.

"Peter Quince" came back downstairs after awhile, wet as a drowned rat. But between the water and the grease he used to fiendify himself, his hair stuck flatter to his face this way than dry.

How in the hell did Arcade ever think he was some decrepit old man?

"Now children, I turn my back for a half hour, and now look at you," the courier admonished. His eyes danced.

"I'm all a mess, Mister Chris," Veronica cried. Her rosy cheeks and weird pink bathrobe made her look like a strange fairytale princess. She really was beautiful out of that potato sack robe. Wisps of black hair straying from the pink towel updo.

The courier sat down next to her. "But do you feel better?"

She used her drink to prod at the golf iron that lay before her on the table. Her royal scepter. "I don't care 'bout anything anymore," she said cheerfully. "Except I have to pee, but I don't feel like getting up. Know what I mean?"

"I don't think James Garrett would appreciate it if you peed yourself.."

Arcade raised his eyebrows and said, into his drink, "We-e-eeelll, you might be surprised what James Garrett appreciates.. "

The courier raised an eyebrow back, and then he grinned. "It seems I need to catch up," he said. "Well, before we all get well and truly borracho.. I want to say that we did good work today. I'm proud of you."

Francine Garrett brought them warm tortillas in a basket and a bowl of meat salsa. "Pigeon, fresh caught," she said proudly. "The Payton kid got 'em with his slingshot just before dark."


	13. Chapter 13

"Welcome back, Mister Chris," James Garrett said as he shook the mixer in both hands. "Say, can I ask you something?"

"Thank you, Mister James, go right ahead."

"Is that really an Enclave eyebot?"

"I don't know, might be. One of the other couriers found it in the rubble."

James Garrett took on a thoughtful expression. "Aren't you afraid it's dangerous?"

"It's only dangerous if you're a communist." The courier downed the last of his first drink, and grinned in prospect of the second. "Are you a communist, James Garrett?"

Garrett threw his head back and laughed. "Christ, no," he said. "Your money's good here, Mister Chris. We love your caps. Matter of fact, Francine found a fella who has the concentration you wanted. You'll have it by morning."

...

They got to drinking together upstairs in the courier's room. Water now, mostly, which was for the best, since Arcade kept spilling it on the bed and on his white shirt.

The courier laughed a huge laugh that just rose up and toppled over itself. You would know his laugh anywhere. He was making up for lost time with one of James Garrett's drinks-- this drink needed a name-- and they struggled through a conversation that fell apart every five minutes.

They only needed to look at one another and it started all over again.

The courier sat up by the head of the bed, a new old shirt, faded trousers, and socked feet. He somehow managed to drink half-laying down without getting it on himself, no matter how his bandaged hands would shake. You just get used to seeing it wobble like that from time to time; it didn't mean he was nervous. He looked very relaxed, flushed in the face, low-lidded eyes. He had very long black eyelashes. Still damp from the shower, and with some after-effect of the grease he used on his hair and his beard, Arcade could see the bone structure of his face more easily. Good high cheekbones. A strong jaw. Arcade had his suspicions, and he suspected old Peter Quince was holding out on everyone.

Gannon had one bare foot on the mattress, leaned back in a stained upholstered chair that looked like a clam shell. It had grown warm, and the air was warm enough in the upstairs level. He had tugged his shirt open an extra button than decency probably allowed, but the courier's eyes moved slowly on him, drinking him in as he drank down his drink from a chipped coffee mug.

"You look in better spirits, Arcade Gannon," the courier told him.

"Uh, well I've had like, a lot, of those things."

"They're good, aren't they."

He took in a deep drink of his glass of water. Freeside water had that distinctive taste to it. "Ask me tomorrow." If I don't wake up in James Garrett's wacky sex dungeon.

The courier grinned.

The truth was that the past two days were a kind of torment he had not faced in years. A decade, maybe. He had turned over and over in his narrow bed of cold sweat. Fear of exposure and capture. Even hearing the Enclave discussed aloud. Dreading that it would show on his face or in something he said.

And then the courier taking everyone aside, father-knows-best, outlining the most reasoned and compassionate explanation of the subject that he had ever heard from a mainlander. He didn't know if that made it any better or worse. Too exhausted and too drunk to make up his mind now. He had forced all thoughts out of his mind for the fiend hunt-- just do your job, do your role-- and there was hardly any time to worry about the past when the present was filled with odious desert raiders.

...

Now Nephi was dead, the bounty taken, and there was nothing to do but take in a hot meal, drink a strong drink, and kick back in the company of the people who had become his friends.

Now the thoughts came back. Dizzy-headed, he wasn't as prepared to deal with them, and he stared back at the courier with a smirking sad smile.

"Y'know they'd kill you for a mutant," Arcade mumbled. "A mainlander mutant."

Without any sign that he saw the turn in conversation to be abrupt, the courier smiled with gentle confidence. "Then I would prove that I was a man," he said.

"You couldn't ever be pure. You have to understand that. They were wrapped up in this idea of, of the survival of the human race. Everyone else was contaminated.. and contagious."

"They weren't all evil, Arcade," the courier told him, and then the low-lidded gray eyes showed amusement. "Do you know what I think you are?"

Arcade opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he took a drink of water. His stomach was full of ice.

"I think you're a bitter idealist," the courier continued. "You want more.. but you know better by now. It's killing you, isn't it." He tipped his socked foot sideways and bumped Arcade's bare foot on the mattress. "You know I'm right."

Gannon sighed. He wanted so much to agree. He wanted men like Judah Kreger and Cannibal Johnson to live free lives without fear. He wanted never to wake in the night from a dream of Daisy being taken, being tortured.

"All I'm getting at.. I just want you to know that it's dangerous to say these things. People might get ideas. You know there are still standing bounties on Enclave personnel. I wouldn't want something bad to happen to you just because Johnny NCR happened to get the wrong idea."

The courier shrugged. "I could care less what the men of California think, especially when they come into the state of Nevada."

Arcade shifted in his seat, both feet to the floor now as he reached back to set his glass on the side table. "But you're helping the NCR."

" _Am_ I?"

"Nelson."

"I couldn't let those boys hang up there."

"These fiends."

"I've hunted fiends for fifteen years.. and, I'll be honest, the caps are good." He raised his coffee mug, and then he gave the bed a single bounce. "I didn't have to eat hard tack and sleep in a ditch."

"Boone."

"I wasn't aware it was called the Boone California Republic."

Arcade shook his head.

"He needs help. I want to help him. He needs something to do besides sit around and stew in his own juices."

"What happened to you? Why if you were this, I don't know, this officer, why are you here instead of wherever you came from?" Arcade regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. "I'm sorry. That sounded very.. that sounded bad. I didn't mean it like that."

Peter Quince smiled. "A fair question, Arcade. I was hurt and I couldn't fight anymore."

"Why didn't they take care of you? What happened to your friends? Your family, your wife?" Arcade ran his hands through his hair, and then just let his arms drop, hanging numbly by the chair. "If.. if it's none of my business.. "

The courier looked down into his drink as he replied, "I was nearly dead. Everyone would have thought I was dead. The Mormons.. I can never repay their kindness." His voice wavered in a way that made Gannon's throat constrict. "It was nearly a year before I recovered. As for my wife.. I loved her, but she deserved a normal man. We were going to divorce. I wanted to find a way that would have been.. acceptable.. to the community. I hope that she is happy, surrounded by her children."

Arcade's heart sank. At least she hadn't known and condemned him to wander and starve. No. Not the deep tone of regret and warmth in his voice. "I'm sorry," he said. There was too much in that confession just yet for him to process.

"Don't be," the courier replied, setting his mug on the nightstand. "I'm alive, and every day is new."

Arcade studied the bearded, weathered face. "You're afraid that people will recognize you.. and realize you were a deserter. Who would know you here? And a lot of time has passed.. I'm sure they would understand?"

He could not read the courier's expression.

Arcade tried for rueful humor. "Besides. The Chairmen might be looking for you now, right? Old man, bushy beard? I say you do what you did with crazy old Antler and El Chupacabra, change your disguise again. Become the handsome hispanic man that you were born to be. Then we will all laugh and drink shots as people wander around trying to find some old bastard Christopher Sly and his associate, Peter Quince."

A smile stole across the courier's face and he rolled his eyes. Arcade saw him start to reach for his drink again, but the coffee mug was empty.

"Admit it. You would think that's hilarious."

The courier took in a breath and let out a weary drunken sigh. He had a slight smile on his face.

A fuzzy silence fell between them. Arcade slouched in the clamshell chair. His toes squeezed the rag rug beside the courier's bed. Then he lifted his hand and placed it on the upper slope of the courier's foot. It was easily within reach and he just rubbed slowly through the sock. The courier tensed at first, but after a moment or two of gentle pressure, his enjoyment was evident.

"I just.. I don't want you to have to crawl around in the desert any more, eating hard tack, sleeping in ditches.. " Arcade gave his foot a gentle squeeze. "Personally? I don't want to eat hard tack or sleep in any more ditches. So if we could avoid that, yeah. Look.. you deserve better. I want you to know that you don't have to live day to day. Look at what you've done so far. You weren't as rusty as you thought, were you? I saw you cut through those fiends like warm butter."

The courier chuckled. "Oh Gannon," he said, pulling away to sit up against the headboard. "Is this where you tell me some line of your idealistic horseshit?"

" _Vincit qui se vincit_ ," Arcade replied. "He conquers who conquers himself." He stared in nerdy earnest at the courier, who sat now staring at him with a knee folded in.

I need you to get better, he thought desperately. The anguished thoughts at the root of his troubles. _I need you to stop blowing around like a tumbleweed. I need to know if I could trust you. I need to know if there's a chance, any chance at all, that this could work. When the remnants die.. I'll be alone._

He couldn't read the look on the courier's face.

"Look.. I'm, drunk. And I'm sure I'll make more sense in the morning." Arcade took the corner of his glasses and pinched them off. All the fingerprints on the lenses were making it hard to see, but then, his vision was pleasantly blurry enough as it was.

The courier said nothing.

Arcade dipped his head and began to try to clean his lenses on the tails of his shirt. He heard the springs squeak once and saw the blurry shape of the courier leaning a little closer on the bed. Bent fingers touched his fingers.

He looked up, and the bandaged hands framed his face. Both thumbs slid slowly on his skin, and by the time they passed from his cheek to his ear, he felt his heart slam against his ribs.

Without looking away, Arcade folded the glasses one-handed with his thumb and set them aside.

They touched slowly. The courier seemed guarded, measured, as though he were judging whether or not this would be a good idea. Arcade already knew it probably wasn't, but then, they were too tired and too drunk to get into too much trouble. He felt wildly excited and completely exhausted all at once. For a blessedly long moment, he thought he might fall asleep with the way the courier gently touched his face and hair. Out of everything, that was what seemed to interest him most in the beginning.

Arcade wasn't blind. He knew the man's attraction to him. Awkward at first, when he mistook the courier for some old poor hungry drifter. He had seemed so honestly delighted to make Gannon's acquaintance, and Arcade likewise. Later, the courier seemed astonished to find so many others who weren't "normal" like him, people who lived that way openly, or didn't care who knew. Arcade had been sorry for him then, thinking-- a shame you found me too late. But the courier behaved with dignity and good humor. An old gentleman, Arcade thought. His interest was never possessive, never a burden. It seemed he enjoyed most a good conversation, a good book, and coffee. It didn't even have to be good coffee.

But the way things happened had changed how Arcade viewed him. Shifting foundations. His ideas rearranging themselves. He was not sure yet what he would find. Maybe a mistake to try this now. Maybe. Felt good, though, rubbing the shoulders he had wanted to comfort. He enjoyed the trembling fingers that dragged slowly across his face. Touching his eyelids now, his eyebrows. I mean a lot to him, Arcade realized, and he smiled while the courier stroked and petted him. He felt dizzy, excited, sleepy.

The graying beard tickled his face and neck, like he had thought it would. Arcade found lips and they kissed slowly, the courier hesitant before they melted together. Arcade skated a hand along his side, working his way beneath the shirt. He flattened his hand when he encountered skin, and the courier sighed a murmury sound against the corner of his mouth. In long slow strokes, Arcade rubbed his shoulder and back.

The courier shivered when Arcade's fingers went across the long old scars down his back. Like the lashes from a whip. He had wondered about those when he saw them earlier, when they had dressed as fiends. So many crazy plans, so many disguises..

The heel of his hand pressed lower now, and he felt the courier's belly suck in with a gasp. It might have been a long time for him. Maybe even since he had been injured.

"Arcade."

"Yeah-- sorry, I'm just," he mumbled, his mouth slipping away from the courier's lower lip.

"Arcade.. "

Don't be awkward, Arcade. Uh. "Why don't you lay out, that way. More comfortable."

The courier nuzzled his forehead, laughing gently. "Too drunk for this, _guapo_ ," he whispered.

"Yeah.. yeah, me too." Arcade patted his hip, and then slowly rubbed along his thigh. "Probably, anyway."

The courier groaned a sound that edged into a hiss just as he stopped Arcade. "We will call it a tie," he said.

"Damn you, James Garrett. Damn you and your awful drink."

For a moment of stillness, looking into his face, it seemed that the courier waited for Arcade to back down. To change his mind entirely. He watched the glassy gray eyes watching him. Something in them said, I will understand.

Arcade brought up one of the bandaged hands and kissed the broken knuckles. A faint smile showed on the courier's face, but it did not reach his eyes.

"At least tell me your name," Arcade said. "Please. Not a Shakespeare one."

The courier hesitated.

"Or from Christopher Marlowe."

That made him smirk. With him, Arcade always knew he was appreciated.

"Garcia," he said.

"Uh huh.. but you're lying though, right?"

The courier stroked his face. "Yes, always."

...

Arcade woke to gunfire, wild barking, and the splitting rays of Nevada sunlight.

Of course a firefight had to break out in Freeside that morning. It sounded only a couple of blocks away, no, scratch that, the whole running shooting battle seemed to go on inside Gannon's head. His mouth was dry and terrible. His eyes stabbed with pain.

He held his head up for only a couple of seconds and let it fall. Ugh. The bed was too narrow, though the one good thing was the warm back against his chest. Garcia woke once in the night that he knew of, disoriented, starting to speak, but he seemed to calm immediately once he realized where he was, when it was, and who he was with.

Arcade lolled in bed for a little while longer. Trying to ignore the sound of gunfire. He heard the quick staccato bursts of a submachine gun-- probably meant the Kings were on it now. The dog's barking took on a weird metallic echo. Definitely the Kings.

Garcia was starting to wake. Arcade touched his arm. Both of them lay mostly clothed, though Arcade had at some point attempted to pull off his shirt. It was still connected to his arm with an inside-out sleeve. He'd missed a button, eh fuck it.

"Do you hear a dog," Garcia said hoarsely.

"Yeah. How's your head."

The courier just shut his eyes and groaned.

Arcade stroked his chest, then his belly. The groan deeped into a different level now. They both needed a shower, having sweated out that weird wonderful-horrible drink that James Garrett made. Arcade couldn't make himself get out of bed, though, and that was all right. He fought to ignore his pounding head, just laying there, mumbling softly, skimming a hand along the waistband of Garcia's trousers. Kissing his neck. Trying to shut his eyes tight and ignore the purple blotches of pain flickering against his eyelids.

The courier was tense and quiet, but he took in little gasps of air that started to wake a thrill of interest from Arcade's aching body.

Then the hall door from the adjoining room was being banged on.

It sounded urgent.

Arcade groaned. "Ffffuck."

"Go."

Arcade clumsily crawled over the courier, which was in itself interesting, and somehow barked his knee on the chair close to the bed. The one his glasses were on. "Argh. Fuck." He pitched his voice, "Coming."

He turned his glasses around in his hands as he went into his own room, only to have the pounding start on the courier's door. Little feet running and then door pounding, thippa-thippa-THUMPTHUMPTHUMP.

It turned out to be Veronica, frazzled, pink-robed, eyes huge. " _Boone's throwing up blood!_ "

...

"I woke up because I had to pee and Boone was in there already and he's passed out again and ohgod Arcade it's that Stealth Boy he was talking weird last night I thought he was just drunk and ED-E, get out of here!"

Blood on the walls, blood on the tiles, the mirror. The toilet bowl. Boone with red lips and chin, a big smear along his arm. Eyes rolled into their corners. He seemed to take up the whole bathroom, half propped up on the floor, his head on his arm on the toilet seat.

Arcade went to him immediately and checked him for consciousness. Tried to get him to speak. Was he aware of what was going on. He used his thumbs to open Boone's mouth, and then he put out his hand for the little flashlight from his doctor's bag.

"When did you find him, Veronica?"

"Two minutes ago. I woke up because I had to pee. Um, and the gunfight outside I guess--"

"Did you hear the toilet flush at all?"

"I don't know? I don't think so? What's it mean, Arcade?"

"It could mean a lot of things." Most of them terrible. The presence of blood in vomit would usually look like coffee grounds under most circumstances. Chemical reactions in the stomach cause the iron in the blood to oxidize. A bleeding ulcer, maybe. Boone was young, but then, Arcade got the idea that he could easily have a history of binges. But this much red. Too much blood to oxidize right away..

The courier looked stricken. Trying to hide it. "What do you need us to do?" he asked. "How can we help?"

"Reach in the doctor's bag and get me a syringe, the little blue jar, and the paper packet with the government warning on it. I need you to make sure the syringe is sterile."

He saw the courier's face tighten. "We went all the same places together," he said. "All of us as a team, and then the two of us. I never received any readings."

Then Veronica realized he was asking them to get the needle ready for a Rad-X injection.

"I don't think it's radiation poisoning," Arcade said after a minute. "It could just be.. it's bright red, right? He could have a cut in the esophagus, or he's just thrown up so much that it's caused irritation.. "

There was so much of it, though.

Arcade stared at the red streaks. He felt Boone tensing beside him, coming to, maybe. He had a wild sudden suspicion that Boone might have swallowed something else. Did he try to kill himself with pills. Did he eat any of the pills yesterday when they were playing with the fiends. Blood like that, a bloody vomit like that.. he remembered finding one of the Omerta girls like that, beautiful and dead in her hotel room.

He looked all around, taking stock of the situation again. Blood everywhere. No. Veronica got up because she had to pee. Boone was already in here. Some random part of Arcade's brain wondered if that meant that they were sharing a room together, or the bathroom. Then he thought he remembered seeing an ugly pink towel on the bed when they rushed in. As well as Boone's shirt folded neatly on the chair right outside the john.

ED-E floated around in a defensive state, whiskers up, clicking softly.

Arcade sighed.

Then, glad that he wasn't wearing a shirt himself, he plunged his hand into the toilet and felt around. "Peter, watch Craig, he might throw up again. Make sure you angle him so he can vomit down. It's okay if it's on me. Veronica, uh," what a weird question, "did you sleep in the same bed last night?"

Veronica nodded and then, somewhat defensively, she added, "I heard him having bad dreams, all right."

"Did he have a shirt on?"

"What?"

"Was he wearing a shirt?"

She blushed fiercely. "Yes," she said. "Why--"

"Then he took off his shirt before he threw up, and he folded it neatly on that chair outside."

"What does that--"

"You woke up because you had to pee."

"And the gunshots."

Arcade pulled his hand out of the bowl of bloody vomit. He turned his hand in the light, looking, judging the color and texture. Oh Boone. You have a friend in me, buddy. Seriously. "Veronica," he said. "I need you to go into your room.. and pee."

"Go on," the courier told her. Arcade could see by the dawning look on his face that the courier also was starting to see where this might go. Heedless of the sticky red floor, the courier was tucked in close to Boone, a hand on his back.

Veronica ran into the other room.

"Not radiation poisoning," Arcade said. "But did you see him take any of the pills?"

The courier shook his head.

Then you heard her scream.

"Is it red?" Arcade yelled.

It was all red.

...

The damned pink drink made everybody piss a different color.

It turned out that Craig hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before. He was a late starter on the drinking but made up for lost time. Arcade and the courier went upstairs after awhile, but Boone had just gotten started. Later, Francine got to drinking with him.

He'd woken up more or less hungover as anyone else in the courier gang, and he'd taken off his shirt because he knew he would be sick.

"Didn't want to mess up my shirt," Boone husked later, looking weak and pained, while the courier wiped his face with a hot towel. Gannon thought of an old dog taking care of its puppy.

"It's all right, Craig. We were just worried about you. So glad you're all right."

Boone just groaned. "So.. stupid," he muttered.

"Don't feel bad, Craig," the courier soothed him. Arcade wondered how many soldiers of his own that he had lost before. That look on his face when they first came on the scene. Garcia seemed so terribly relieved now. "We'll laugh about this later. Promise. I once threw up in my commander's helmet and passed out a state function. In front of the general. That is why I have this chip in my tooth here."

Craig smirked weakly. "Heh."

Boone was just horribly hungover, thank God. Gannon was surprised, given his weight and size, but who knew. Good God. In a sharp uneasy moment of recall, Arcade realized how quickly they jumped to conclusions-- Boone going insane, Boone trying to commit suicide by swallowing pills.

Arcade was furious with James Garrett and whatever backalley shit he served them, but then, when he went down there, he saw the man's horrified face and completely distraught sister.

"Red piss?"

"Am I going to die, Gannon?"

"Yeah. Some day, though. Probably not today. You uh, used some kind of food coloring last night. The pink drinks."

"Oh man." James Garrett moaned. "Are you fucking serious?"

"Yeah. Who else did you serve those to?"

"Just your gang. And I had some. Oh my God." James lifted his head off his sister's lap, looked around wildly. "Those will never sell again.. "

Francine sighed. "Jesus wept," she grunted. "Your tranquilizers are here, Doc, by the way."

James moaned, "I need one."

...

Gannon kept thinking of what Veronica told him in panic.

"What did you mean by that. He was talking weird."

"I overreacted. I thought the stealth device was screwing up his brain or something. Like the old wives tale. I guess he was just drunk.. and he didn't eat anything last night, did you notice?"

"What did he say?"

"He started saying that.. " Veronica bit her lip. She was still dressed in that crazy bathrobe. None of them had changed yet. "You can't tell him I said this, Arcade. Please. He started talking like he thought his wife was alive."

"Like she was still here?"

"No. Like he knew she was gone, but he was going to get her back someday."

Arcade sighed.

"He thinks he missed the shot. He said he was nervous and he couldn't control his breathing. He said he might have closed his eyes. He said after the shot it was hard to see because they were swarming all over the auction block.. "

Arcade's heart tightened. He thought of Craig confessing this to Veronica somewhere in the dark of night, after his nightmares. "Let's just keep an eye on him. We're not doing anything today but resting. So. Let's just.. rest, okay?"

Veronica nodded. "Yeah."

"Go get the Stealth Boy, though. Don't put it on, just bring it to my room."

"I don't know where he keeps it. And, um, don't we.. won't we need it, for the plan?"

Arcade sighed. "I'll talk to.. Mister Chris."

...

Garcia spent the morning scrubbing red food coloring off the walls and tiles of the third upstairs bathroom. Craig was mortified, but then, he took everything too seriously. Needed to relax. Holy hell. Garcia saw poor Boone laying there sweaty and bloody with his jingly dog tags, and he'd almost wanted to cry.

He'd loved many of his soldiers, like Big Red and Little Red, Mark and Shiny, and even Charley, who was always level with him. Yucca Leaf, who could shoot better than many of the men. He missed them every day.

He wasn't sure why he had come to care for Craig as much as he did. Sad for him, sure. And angry for him. So much wasted potential. Gorobets would have been a good officer. If only Boone could have had Gorobets from the beginning, instead of this Gilles person. If he ever met this Gilles person..

 _Carla Boone crouches on her hands and knees, her face close to his face as he scrubs the tiles._

Of course he felt bad for Craig because of his woman. Of course he thought about that. More and more, these days, with the way his mind plays tricks on him.. there she is now, her straggly blond hair, he can see it almost clearly through his blurry, achy vision.

He wouldn't have stood for that. Not what happened with Carla. If he had been there. He would have stopped it. He never-- not once. It was against everything he fought for. The gods knew that.

Breakfast was a hot plate of jalapeno eggs, pigeon sausage, and James Garrett's profuse apologies. Garcia wasn't angry-- he forgave honest mistakes-- and settled for a shot of tequila to start the day. Hair of the dog. Damn trying to eat breakfast hungover in a casino, though. His aching head.

Gannon found him sometime before noon. He was pleased to see Arcade, thinking warmly of the night before.

"The tranquilizers came in," Arcade said. "I'll, uh, get those started. Look.. um."

The courier felt his heart constrict. Ah. Of course. He'd been very drunk-- he should have known better. At least it had not gone very far, he didn't think he could bear it if--

"I'm concerned about Craig, so, uh, I think maybe we shouldn't use the Stealth Boys any more," Arcade told him, dropping down in the chair opposite.

"That had nothing to do with it, and you know that," Garcia replied, fighting down a wave of relief.

Arcade rubbed his face with his hands. He'd taken another shower, and looked incredibly tired. Maybe they could go lay down a little while. They had until early the next morning.

"I'm just concerned for Craig's mental state."

"So am I, but sitting around is the worst thing for him. There's work that needs doing, and he's the man for that job."

Arcade made a face. The courier pushed his plate across the table to see if he would take food. "We could do it without the stealth, though, couldn't we?" he asked, looking contemplatively at the scrambled eggs.

The courier nodded. "Maybe.. but it's the safest and surest way."

Arcade picked up the fork. "We need to watch him."

"By tomorrow morning, I intend to see him recognized for taking back Camp Nelson from two decani and for putting down three of the major fiends in the wasteland."


	14. Chapter 14

He dreams a dream of fire and yelling, a dream of strange gods and old memories, colors and smells, and a distant pain. He needs a fix. He wakes up because he needs it-- no, he wakes up from the pain, that sharp sting.

There is a gloved hand hard over his mouth.

He starts to scream to wake the others, but the sting subsides, and his whole body tingles. He has only a minute to break free of what is happening, but the minute goes by, and the moment is lost. It does not matter. This is his destiny.

He gets up when they pull him up, and he walks when they shove him. He feels like he has no legs. No pants either. He can see himself and chuckles. Slept naked by his armor. So hot. So thirsty.

There is a man standing by his shoulder and it is a doctor. He gets a new shot and sighs, swaying on his feet. Someone is holding him up, and he lays around limply, looking, seeing nothing really.

There are shapes moving in the camp. They flash in and out. A big man hoists his flamethrower and takes it away.

That's mine, he tries to say. That's mine, asshole. But he can't speak.. and he doesn't care, not really. His eyes see but his brain knows nothing.

An old man grabs the fuel cans. He disappears.

A little woman sneaks in then on sneaky little woman feet. She brings Queenie walking slowly, walking sleepy. Queenie and her big dark eyes coming to him.

The smell of fuel floods his nostrils.

Then the little woman lights a lighter, and the amazing thing happens, a huge fire bursting into life and racing around the camp.

A circle of fire holding in the camp.

Cook-Cook laughs and dreams, a dream of fire and yelling.

...

Boone killed two of them before they all woke up. They were still half-staggering around, panicked, trying to find their armor and weapons. They didn't know what was happening. They would only know gunshots, and fire.

The courier had fought raiders and monsters like these for his entire career. They had no discipline. They had no honor. The trick, Mister Chris explained, was that you had to get the upper hand immediately. Frighten them. Disorient them. Take control of the situation.

So that is why Cook-Cook looked on, naked and tranquilized, laughing softly as his comrades screamed inside a circle of fire.

They had nowhere to go. Maybe one place. The courier gang sent them there.

Gannon finally ran out of ammunition. The last hissing round from his energy weapon. Boone would try to find him a new weapon from supply.

It didn't take long to finish up at the fiend camp.

Cook-Cook giggled the whole time, the son of a bitch, but the brahmin was scared.

"It's going to be all right, Queenie," Veronica said, patting the animal's thick neck. "It's going to be fine. Let's go now. We don't want to be late."

"Cook-Cook, Cook-Cook," giggled that awful voice. Cook-Cook giggled all the way out of the ruins and into the desert. He giggled when he stepped across broken glass on bare feet, and he giggled when Boone stuck him with a machete just to see.

This was the bastard who raped Betsy, the bastard who held her down and hurt her while the whole camp laughed and danced around in their own shit. Gannon said he'd caught other women, fucked and burned them. Gannon told them about a woman burned all over her body, a woman once known as Pretty Sarah.

As they crossed the final stretch with the airport in sight, Boone reached out with his machete and cut Cook-Cook how he ought to be cut. You don't treat women like that.

He'd half expected the doctor to admonish him for being cruel, but when you looked at Gannon's face, there was a part of him that understood.

"There's an artery close by, Boone, watch it," Gannon said. "You don't want him to bleed out before his big day."

...

It was the boy's first time pulling guard duty, some green boy from outside Sacramento. He'd come east to fight the Legion at Hoover Dam.

Private Ricky Saddler looked on in mild curiosity at the group that wandered up to the McCarran gates. He felt a little twinge of alarm. He'd never stopped or challenged anyone for real. They didn't look like a patrol, some five people and a slowly plodding brahmin.

Then he saw the red beret, a First Recon man.

Then he saw that one fella. Oh Jesus! That one fella was really hurt! Oh Jesus! His pecker was damn near cut off!

"Hang on, mister, I'll go get a doctor," Private Saddler cried.

Then one of them smirked, pushed back his glasses and said, "I _am_ a doctor.. uh.. we're here with the bounty, though, if you could get somebody to wake up Major Dhatri."

The First Recon man smiled a cold smile. His eyes all black sunglasses.

...

"This had better be good," Dhatri grumbled as he jumped round on one leg, trying to get into his uniform pants. Fucks sake. He had an hour left before he had to wake up for the day.

The whole camp was alive, buzzing like a hive, throngs of people everywhere whispering and looking, mostly soldiers who should mind their own damn business and get back to their posts or their tents or God help em, Dhatri would find some way to keep them busy.

That crazy old bastard Christopher Sly came out of the crowd. "Good morning, major," he said.

"Sly! What did you do now?"

"I'm sorry about all the trouble I've caused you, major. I know you're trying to help me. That's why with this bounty, I've brought you the head intact. There will be no doubt in anyone's mind after this."

"Fucking Christ. You telling me you killed Cook-Cook?"

"Not exactly."

And Major Dhatri saw the source of the excitement-- the courier's gang standing by, Sgt Boone, the doctor, a little woman in a faded sundress holding a brahmin by the rope, and a man.. a man naked and bloody, laughing, having a good old time in the heart of Camp McCarran.

Dhatri's head whipped back and he looked into the frightening eyes of the courier they tried to kill, that man Christopher Sly. "Major, if I may make a request," he said softly.

...

Colonel James Hsu had been up since yesterday with the grim facts that lay before him. There was a Legion spy in Camp McCarran. Somewhere, somehow. He did not know how long it had been going on.

Was it some disgruntled soldier who was promised Arizona gold? Or was it one hidden among their own, wearing their uniform, eating with them in the mess tents, sleeping in the bunk beside their own. He'd like to think that you would know just by looking at them. That you would look into their eyes and see the madness of the man who called himself Caesar.

He licked his fingertip and went through the reports again, just as the running footsteps in the hall slid to stop by his door. "Sir! Major Dhatri sends for you-- he wants permission to.. well, it's urgent."

...

The trumpet sounded.

The men snapped into formal rows and columns.

The morning air was still, the bear flag wrapped half round the pole, but a bird of a great wingspan circled the camp. The eagle was an omen.

Sergeant Craig Boone had the honor of calling First Recon into formation. He stood with them once more, as he once did.

Arcade Gannon felt a deep wistful stirring in his soul. He remembered the gravity and honor of military ceremony. Childhood memories of brave men with an impossible mission.

Colonel James Hsu himself came to inspect the formation. In the morning light you could see the flashing insignia on his beret. He lingered last by First Recon and shook Boone's hand, had words for Major Dhatri.

Christopher Sly-- Peter Quince-- Garcia-- the courier, he had requested this formal execution so that all could see and witness the act of justice. He had also made a request that to all others may have seemed strange but justice also, in the oldest way.

Cook-Cook had endured broken glass, desert rubble, and Boone cutting him, giggling all the while, but it wasn't until what happened next that he began to know pain and understand.

In the part of the ceremony where-- in Gannon's memory-- the chaplain would have spoken, Colonel Hsu looked from Major Dhatri across to Christopher Sly, who held the rope of the brahmin Queenie.

The courier unbuttoned the sheath of his machete and removed the long and rounded blade.

Gannon saw his lips move but heard nothing at this distance.

Soldiers from a tribal past would know, though. They would understand what the gods were due.

The courier drew the machete across the animal's throat like an ancient sacrifice.

And Cook-Cook finally screamed.

He continued to scream, even as Hsu called for Dhatri, and Dhatri called for one soldier.

Corporal Betsy reported.


	15. Chapter 15

Freeside was the King's turf, and the Kings strutted full force. Lonely scraps of trash blew in the late afternoon breeze. The streets were silent. No gunfire, no screaming. The courier noted the lack of people, wondered where they went, what was happening.

A sideburned man in tight pants and a striped shirt gave him a nod in passing. "Hey, there, mister, you prolly wanna take off that hat, just sayin'."

The courier said, "Thanks for the advice," and once he had gone by, "What in the hell?"

Arcade sighed. "Oh boy.. here we go."

...

Back at the Atomic Wrangler, James Garrett slid around the bar and went right for them. "All right, gang!" His hands came together in a single clap. "What do you say to a round of drinks? On the house-- wait wait wait."

He saw the deathly look that Craig Boone gave him.

"Hear me out," Garrett continued. "I've made this new drink and it's killer. Uh, bad phrasing there, but seriously-- it's good, it's safe, and you'll love it."

"I don't know, James," Veronica said. "I kind of want to pee in just one color. Pretty boring that way, not very adventurous, I know."

The courier smirked. "What the hell, James! I'll have one."

Boone motioned with his head toward the door. "What's with the Kings, something going on?" He shifted his rifle slightly on his shoulder.

Francine rolled her eyes as she walked by with a box of vinyl records. "That damn dog of theirs got loose again. Don't worry about it. Stay inside for a little while, you'll be fine. Let my poor brother make you a drink. It's pretty good, actually."

The courier took off his hat and rubbed his sweaty hair. "Why don't you go take a shower and relax, Craig? Thank you for getting my boots. You did well today."

Boone gave a tight nod and parked the boots neatly on a chair in passing. He went thumping up the stairs.

"A little much for just one dog?" the courier remarked after a minute.

Arcade let out a low whistle. "You don't know this dog. That thing is a hell hound."

...

Garcia breathed deeply in the hot shower. The cloying steam made him more lightheaded than he already was. Cautious of fainting, he put out a shaky hand toward the faucet. A little cooler water. He washed slowly with Arcade's bar of soap. The doctor always had good soap. He was always washing his hands. There was a tough homesteader wife he bought from. She made all different kinds in a huge cauldron out in the back yard.

This one that smelled like pine needles. The scent of pine made him think of the Mormons' cabin, strong memories of comfort and kindness. He would send them a little money again, now that he had money. He last sent them a postcard from Primm the last time he came through the Mojave. He wondered how long it would take to get there.

He wanted to tell Arcade about what happened in the Utah. Maybe not now. Maybe not all of it, but enough.

Francine Garrett had left a folded pile of new clothes in his room. She had procured something more his size. Arcade must have mentioned something to her, left her some money. He held out the pair of blue jeans and clucked his tongue. That was going to be one hell of a tight fit.

Instead, he went with something more loose. He didn't bother with any of the socks.. ah, bless Arcade, he must have requested a lot of socks. Every soldier loved fresh socks to begin with, but Arcade must have known he was shy about his feet. Didn't matter. He wasn't going to need them right away.

"What are you up to, Arcade?" he called gently through the half-open adjoining door.

"Kill the pig. Bash her head."

The courier smiled with genuine pleasure. Arcade was reading Lord of the Flies, as he had hoped he would.

"Do you like the book?"

A rhythmic sound came through the door, the sound of Arcade tapping something like a drum beat. "Kill the pig. Bash her head. Cut her throat."

"I'll take that as a yes?"

"This is realllly good, _mi Chupacabra_. And James Garrett brought up some of his hell drinks. They're also realllly good." Arcade added, in a slight half-sigh, half-purr sort of voice, "I drank some of yours, by the way. Had to test it. I'm a doctor."

The courier leaned his head against the door frame, shutting his eyes a moment. Ah. He was happy. Craig had done so well. He cared little for the bear flag, but today, gazing out across the formation, he had felt his throat tighten. For a moment, those men and women were his own blood, and they stood together for what was right.

Now Arcade in the next room over, reading a book, drinking a drink, waiting for him to get out of the shower. He was all jokes earlier, talking in that lower pitched smoldering voice. "You know what, I don't even care, you can wear your hair however you want, guapo. It'll be like wrestling Mexican Santa Claus. Oh my childhood was already ruined, it's not a problem."

He felt like he was missing a reference. Sounded vaguely familiar.

He left his socks on the chair, and his bandages also. Might as well get this over with. He ran bare hands through his hair, and then sighed. Barefoot, he padded into the adjoining room. Heart in throat.

Arcade had his long feet propped up on the end of the bed. He was so tall, such a long body, surprisingly toned. A fuzzy blondness showing through his open shirt, disappearing from his navel down into the waistband of his trousers. He had an arm folded behind his head.

"I know the first twenty pages or so were ripped out of this," Arcade was saying without looking up from the novel, "but you know, you ought to have Veronica write down an explanation and we'll put it in the book. So when someone else finds this book, they can pick up on the story."

He struggled against it as best he could, but he knew he loved Arcade Gannon.

Coming up behind him, he ran his hands through the blond hair, and Arcade tilted his head back in appreciation. A stupid little smile and "mmm," and then Gannon saw, and jolted up. The book flapped to the floor. " _Oh my God._ "

"If you pity me, I'll kill you," the courier warned him. "If you tell anyone else.. yet," he said tightly. No. Don't say it like that.

Arcade gaped. The doctor part of his brain kicked in-- you could see him analyzing as he pushed his glasses up and swung his feet to the floor.

The courier relaxed and picked the book off the floor. Arcade was using a caravan card to keep the place in the pages. "People feel sorry for me, or they ask questions. There's really no way to walk around like this. You understand."

He added, "It doesn't hurt all the time. Doctor Mitchell said there was damage to the nerves. It's all in my head, I think. It's been worse since I was shot, but Doc Mitchell says I can train it to make it better. He had me do exercises where I squeezed a baseball. Anyway.. " He smiled wryly. "I didn't want to leave my socks on." He sat on the edge of the bed on the space Gannon made for him.

"I don't think I've ever heard of anyone surviving a crucifixion," Arcade finally said.

The courier winked. "I know a rascal who did. The Mormons wouldn't stop telling me about him."

Arcade's eyebrows finally came down from his hair. He reached out both hands to try to touch Garcia's fingers. He did it so carefully, so gently. It reminded Garcia of how his wife would pick up a desert tarantula.. you had to do it slowly from both sides as to not frighten the creature.

"What happened?"

"Do you know what a frumentarius is?"

"Caesar's spies. His secret police."

The courier nodded. "That is what happened. They set a trap for me and my boys-- I don't want to talk about it. What is done is done. I'm alive. _Al mal tiempo, buena cara._ "

Arcade tilted his hand one way and then another in the light of the bare bulb lamp. It was his right hand, the worst one, where the weight of his suspended body had caused a tear. Gannon's fingertips feathered over the purple scar tissue, where his desperate body had gnarled and swelled to try and survive.

"I should have figured it out-- back at Nelson. I should have realized it meant a lot to you to save them."

"Ranger Milo was a son of a bitch. I'd never leave any of mine."

"Does it hurt when I do this." Arcade rubbed the scar, and then applied lighter pressure.

"No."

Then Arcade manipulated his ring finger. "Do you feel a kind of.. like a twanging sensation? If you think of plucking a guitar string. Or more of an electrical sensation?"

"At times. More like the guitar string."

"Like.. " Arcade put his forefinger and thumb together. Flicked his ring finger. "Now?"

Garcia snatched his arm away. "Yes. Damn you, Gannon."

"Sorry. But Doc Mitchell is right, definitely, uh, definitely nerve damage. In fact there is a term for what you're probably experiencing and James Garrett's drink has made me forget it. But it's in one of my medical journals. And, yeah, uh.. way to kill the mood, right?"

The courier crossed his arms. "Kicking off the night with a book about feral children.. moving in on the mechanics of crucifixion. Ay, mi corazón.. ." He smirked, trying for humor-- he had always believed the Trickster had a paw in sparing him.

To his relief, Arcade shook his head and smirked back. "Can't you feel the awkward just sizzling in here?" Then he reached out in earnest and clasped the courier by the arm. "Thank you for.. trusting me. I won't say anything. Really... and I completely understand. It's nobody's business."

"But seriously," he started to say, "the baseball thing is a great idea, when you consider the musculat--"

Garcia kissed him to shut him up.

The marriage had been arranged, and the groom dreaded it as much as the bride. She had wept a continous flow of tears from ceremony to the bedroom. Neither one of them had any intention of consummating their union, though she had resigned herself to her terrible fate. So frustrated with the turn of events, he had finally lost his battle with manly composure and burst into tears himself.

This seemed to confuse the girl, who sniffled and wiped snot on her expensive sleeve. She stared at him in disbelief... and then she laughed.

They grew to love one another. It was a team. A friendship. When he was on the march, she wrote him long letters with watercolor pictures, and when he returned with gifts from far-off lands, she galloped out and launched onto his back. She was a weird little one who liked to secretly doll herself up in Old World fashion, and they would put on hidden vinyl records and drink margaritas in the kitchen. There was a lemon tree in the back yard and they would throw the fruit at each other and the dog, who tried to catch them in his mouth, and never learned his sour lesson. The dog spitting them out and grimacing. What did you think would happen, _idiota!_

One night, after years of comfortable companionship, she had come out of her bedroom in a trailing silk gown he had found for her in the rubble of a dress shop. She was barely breathing when she put out a delicate hand to push down the novel he was reading. Her small hands took his hands. Please, she said, and when he hesitated, she burst into tears and went to her knees, hugging his legs. He knew well the pain of unfulfilled desire, of needing someone, anyone. He could not deny her.

He used to wish they would create a child together. Though he did not feel drawn to women, he loved her, and in their union he found something delightful and mysterious. A little spark of a goddess in every woman. He would have loved their children, but it was better he did not leave behind any orphans. Let her start again with the man who could not live without her. That poor boy with the hollow eyes. A heart full of hell. Waahanitsay had been so strange, as weird as she was. He could not be jealous of them; it was plain to see that she was his soul.

She had wept with happiness with he blessed her love with his successor. "You'll find someone for you," she'd blurted out through runny tears. He'd never believed it. His only lover was gone by then and he had finally realized the depth of the man's scorn for him. He had spent half his life clinging to scraps of affection from an indifferent partner, one he should have let go a long time ago. For that he was deeply sorry, oh my Rabbit, forgive me.

He had started to believe he deserved no more than that. It was wrong to be so perverted when a dying world needed normal men, needed babies. The Mormons had a dim view of that affliction, but they were gentle, and prayed for his soul.

He'd wanted Arcade Gannon from the beginning. Innocently at first. Nearly dropping that shipment of medicines. He must have looked so clumsy with shaky hands. He had felt ashamed for nearly breaking the vials when he had limped so far to bring them, the scar on his brow still barely half-healed. There had been a mixup with the payment. Julie Farkas insisted that the Mojave Express had been paid in advance, and then some drug addict came in howling with an emergency and the pathetic mail carrier had been left stranded in the Old Mormon Fort with no food, no water.. and no Mormons.

 _What do you mean there aren't any Mormons?_ he had asked the blond doctor who came by with profuse apologies and half a sandwich.

 _Sorry_ , Arcade said. _We're fresh out of them!_

Gannon didn't seem to have anything else better to do for the moment, but he promised to talk to Julie. The pity annoyed the courier, but Arcade was marvelously intelligent, and when he remarked cheerfully and wittily on his own state of misery-- Arcade laughed and knew the quote right away!

 _Ambrose Bierce! An American treasure!_

It seemed that they had spent the whole afternoon talking. That they had spent this whole time in a conversation. It seemed to him in the beginning that sleep got in the way of talking to Arcade Gannon, and it pleased him indescribably that the doctor seemed to feel the same. Revelation of Gannon's own persuasion had come so easily and offhandedly that it seemed as though he treated it like being born with freckles, or red hair, or left handed. That revelation was the cause of so much anguish.

He'd wanted this so badly. He tried to fight against it. He was a grown man and he could be stronger than that. He had no business dragging Arcade into his own personal hell. They would kill him. They would never believe he was innocent.

Now that he had Arcade here like this, though, he realized selfishly that he needed this too much to care. Not just this.. he could be stronger than that. Two years ago, he had given in to overwhelming need and followed a New Reno hustler back to his hovel. He'd lost his nerve, looking into that flat contemptuous stare and seeing Jackrabbit. He'd left the money all the same.

Arcade's glasses are half-falling off. Garcia forces himself to focus on a detail. The glasses are the detail. Why is he still wearing the glasses, the lamp is out and there are only dim shadows to see. _I want to see your face_ Arcade whispered to him, but he had stroked his beard and said, with nervous sarcasm, _What with all this._

He tries not to speak. He can barely breathe with the words caught in his throat. The worst thing now would be if he said anything, if he said anything to give himself away. He tries not to make a sound, but a jagged breath escapes him with a groan. Arcade does what he just did again.

Garcia focuses on the glasses. The light coming in through the window catching on the lens. His hands tremble, and he taps Arcade's shoulder quickly, as though they were sparring and he needs to signal he's had enough. His entire body experiences the rumbly laughter that is the answer.

Swearing hard, he pulls the blasted glasses off. Another tortured breath and he strokes Arcade's hair where the left frame went through, and then he grabs the nape of his neck with more force than he intended. There is a great cold moment of pure blissful nothing and then he realizes he has the back of his hand against his mouth, and that shaky hand is holding glasses.

Gannon nuzzles against him in amusement, and then he leans up to gently prise the glasses away. "You all right?" he whispers.

He just breathes for now. It is all he can do. Arcade works a hand back through his shaggy hair and kisses him.

"Why do you still have your glasses," Garcia manages to say.

"So I can put them back on for effect, like a smartass."

And that is what he does.

He loves this. A partner who will let him do this as much as he wants, without scorn or begrudging. Without any 'accidental' thrusts that make him choke, without any passive-aggressive grips on his scalp and hair. Rabbit used to dare him to do anything about it. Just with his eyes. He should have known that this wasn't how it should have been, that it could have been anything better. Rabbit had been ruined for kindness or affection. Rabbit had been ruined. He should have let him go.. but now he was free.

He tries not to think of it any more, but it was all he knew. Arcade will be different. Already it is much different. Arcade lets him do whatever he likes, and he chats pleasantly-- the man never shuts up once you get him started. He strokes his hands through Garcia's shaggy hair, squeezing and kneading. Feels good, but stop talking, Arcade. Just stop talking.

"You don't shut up, do you, guapo?" he asks, blowing a thin stream of air over wet skin.

"Keep.. yeah.. " Arcade shivers. "Uh. Uh, are you going to be offended if.. okay, I'm an asshole, but the way we're uh situated here, my field of view is directly pointed at that drink on the nightstand there and I'm really thirsty. Uh, you mind if I.. God, I'm a bastard, never mind, you're.. this is stupendous. Really. "

"You're the doctor making the big money, you can sleaze all you want. Live the high life."

"Hell yes, big deal Doctor Gannon. I've got my drink, I've got weird room in a tawdry casino, got my sexy homeless man. _Vivaaaaa_ , Las Vegas.. "

They both laugh incredibly hard but that doesn't stop Arcade from apologizing to death. They share kisses and a gulp from the glass of James Garrett's mixed drink. "I'm sorry. Really. I need to be beaten in the street or something, but you know me, I can't resist making a remark, the sound of my own voice, et cetera--"

When Arcade discovers the hard way how cold the drink really is, he yells. Garcia laughs, because he doesn't talk much after that.

...

Later, they stare stupidly out the window at the dingy looking moon. Listening to a wayward band of impersonators trying to catch a monstrous dog.

Garcia is slowly kissing the fingertips that wander across his face.

A shadow falls across the moon. The both of them stare out the window at the thing, and the thing stares into the window from outside.

The familiar faceplate hovers dolefully outside the window. The pane of glass half-mutes a deeply pathetic weeble.

"Why is ED-E outside," Garcia slurs.

The eyebot orients on the mention of its name, and then, in a desperate bid for sympathy, its speakers emanate a song familiar to anyone else in that alleyway right now.

Are you.. lonesome tooonight..

Garcia sighs. "Craig must have banished him outside. Can you let him back in."

"Y'know," Arcade yawned. "I'm getting tired of Boone's anti-American shit."

Breakfast was jalapeno eggs, fresh salsa, and some kind of meat that they agreed to call country ham.

"Totally ham. Seriously," Arcade said. "I know ham when I see it."

Garcia grinned. "You are a ham."

"Takes one to know one. Anyway, I'm a doctor, I'm trained, stand back for the autopsy." Knife and fork in hand, Arcade made a theatric throw of the wrists, and then he set in with a preliminary cut. When the fork dug in and the knife went across, he made a piggy squeal of a sound that sent Veronica into laughter. "Eeeeeeeee and the results are in. It's pig. So I don't want to hear anything about cats going missing or any sudden decline in the giant rat population."

"Sure it's not that dog they were looking for?" Veronica swished her orange juice. "Kind of a coincidence, don't you think?"

"Oh no. That dog was already dead."

Garcia paused with his eggy fork half-way to his mouth. "What do you mean by that, Arcade? A dead dog?"

"Do you know what a German shepherd was?"

Garcia's eyes went huge.

"It was a breed of dog used by the police. There was a program before the war--"

Veronica leaned in with interest. "A cyberdog! We had a crate of K9 parts back home." She swatted away a fly to protect Boone's plate. "We could never get one to work, though."

"Oh, this one doesn't exactly work either. The motivator is broken, at least two of the joints need replacing.. hell, he probably needs a new brain. The vocabulator, though, that's where the creep factor hits the roof. Anyway.. " He turned back to Garcia, who still had his damn fork in the air. Egg fell off it. "Anyway, when Freeside clears out because of a little old dog getting loose, it's not because Sparky chased a ball out of the yard and got lost. It's because a bulletproof undead cyborg patrols the streets with glowing red eyes hell-bent on justice. And hats. He hates hats. If he's around, you better take off your hat.. or he'll take it off for you."

"Dawww," Veronica said teasingly, her mouth full of scrambled eggs. "What's the bad boy's name?"

"Rex. He's the King's dog."

"Makes sense," Garcia said quietly. He ate his eggs with a strange expression. Then, "Is Craig coming down?"

They all looked at the empty chair and cooling plate.

Veronica said in a theatric voice. "Oh no! I told him to take off that beret! Rexxxx!"

They have a good laugh over that, Arcade and Veronica anyway.

Garcia squeezed Gannon's shoulder and went upstairs to check.

...

The piece of paper is folded neatly, left on the side table by the courier's book. Even as Garcia grabs for it, he already knows what it will say.

He saw the dog tags laying beside it.

...

 _mr chris  
thanks for everything  
sorry i couldnt_

Oh shit. Oh shit.

"I last saw him an hour ago, an hour and a half, tops," Veronica was saying. There was a tremor in her voice.

Arcade pulled on his shoulder holster. Fuck he was out of ammunition for the energy weapon. He was going to have to make do with ordinary iron. "Okay, uh, did he say anything to you? Like, like last time?"

"No." Veronica was looking through the adjoining rooms for something. "He was very quiet last night, I heard him go to bed early."

Garcia pulled on the new set of boots that Craig got him from supply. He had one socked foot in. "What do you mean, last time?"

Veronica hesitated. She had the courier's Pip Boy in both hands. "ED-E should have a finder function, he might be able to detect the stealth gauntlet and show us on the map where Boone is. If he took the Stealth Boy with him. And I think he did."

Garcia struggled to lace his laces-- Arcade pulled his foot up on his thigh to do it. "What did he say to you?" he asked Veronica again.

"The other day.. he said to me that he thinks he missed the shot. When he shot Carla. He's been making these comments about getting his breathing wrong. He said he was really nervous.. "

"The sniper holds his breath when he takes a shot," the courier said. "Oh.. hell."

"I thought he was just very drunk or tired, or, I don't know-- you remember when he was hurt at Novac? When the nightkin attacked, and you were giving him painkillers for his side? How he kept talking like he thought Carla was still alive?"

 _So glad she's home_ , Boone had said, eyes glassed over with total relief.

ED-E swooped in, alarmed, faithful.

"Veronica," Garcia said. "See if you can pull that up. He won't have too far a start on us if we hurry.. and I think, ah, gods, I think I know where he's going."

...

They follow a blinking icon that zig-zags its way south.

Sometimes it drops off the map. Sometimes it veers away.

There is a tense hour where they gain ground on it. The icon glows and holds in place.

 _Please don't be sick. Please don't be dead. Just pass out somewhere and stay there. Please please please.. I should have seen you would do this. I should have seen you needed help. We tried to help you. We thought you would get better._

Arcade remembed Novac in the beginning of this whole episode. How it all started with that damn device.

He remembered how Craig had been on the painkillers, when he started to open up, strangely, and you heard him say aloud what he thought inside.

He remembered how Craig started to talk in a staggering, wild voice, all starts and stops and a deep breath, talking about how they wouldn't fight anymore and she was right anyway and he would do anything, he was so sorry, he was so glad she came home and that was all that mattered, that she was home-- everyone was going to be so surprised-- he knew his breathing was wrong-- it was like a miracle-

He remembered the drugged man lounging in a chair in Novac's courtyard, bewildering everyone with a faithful series of songs once made half-popular by a hard-drinking has-been radio singer.


	16. Chapter 16

Veronica remembered the warm hulk slowly breathing beside her. He won't talk to you like normal people hold a conversation. No opening, no preamble. He'll talk like he shoots. Total silence for hours and then a perfect burst of words. Then nothing.

"Think she probably thought it was me coming home. Getting off shift early."

Veronica was still half asleep.

"Sometimes I'd go in as quiet as I could. Get her by the ankle and drag her down the bed.. "

Veronica blushed.

"Maybe she thought. I don't know. But they were real rough with her. Blood made it easy to follow. Somewhere around the turn-off she must have had the miscarriage."

Veronica gasped, cold all over.

"Couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl yet. It was just a.. like a little.. doll, or or a toy.. like rubber." His big hands motioned vaguely in the darkness, like he was describing the size of something, something he was trying to hold. "I read the bill of sale.. read it so many times. They were going to pay for the baby too. But they hurt her."

That was the most he had ever said to her at once. Or to anyone that she had heard. She sat up immediately and pulled her body closer to him, not knowing what to do. What do you say to someone in this situation. What do you say.

"Oh, Boone, I'm so sorry." So stupid, so trite, but she had nothing but a hug to comfort him. There were no words.

She stroked his stubbledy head, his face. Placed her hand on his big chest over his heart. He seemed so huge, like cuddling up to a lion.

"She wanted it to be a boy. I wanted a girl. Carla was afraid it wouldn't like her. She never got along with girls. The other girls were always catty to her backstage. Specially as she got older. But you.. she'll like you."

...

"Yeah he was here. Oh shit." Manny Vargas sank against the side of Dinky the Dinosaur. "Oh, oh shit. He said.. he said you guys were staging an op or something. He looked like hell, didn't even shave. I should have picked up on it. He always shaves. I guess I thought you guys were going in disguise or something again. One of your crazy plans. Oh my God."

Garcia shielded his eyes against the setting sun. "How long ago?"

"We'll have to hurry. I think he got spooked, he might try to double back or something." Manny Vargas let out a breath. Then his face went tight. "You shouldn't have let him wear that thing! Christ, everybody knows it fucks with your brain!"

"And you should have helped him!" Garcia snapped back. "He was your brother, you let him down!"

Vargas pushed off the side of the rex and Arcade got in between them. "Hey, hey, focus," he said.

Garcia stepped around him and Vargas likewise, this was going to be ugly, and Arcade had no time right now for el machismo.

Thankfully Veronica was spinning up her gauntlet already, and they only got a few shoves and a cuff in before a little woman with super-strength horned in on their machismo.

"Calm the fuck down," Arcade said. "You can fight all you want later. Let's try to uh stay together for Boone. Okay. Jesus. We all care about Craig. Got it. We're upset. Check. We can still find him with ED-E but we're going to have to go now."

Garcia touched what was going to become, no doubt, a stupendous black eye. Give it a day or two.

Manny Vargas talked around the hand held up to his bloody nose. "I'm coming with you," he said. "I've got to do this."

From the courtyard came one of Manny's friends, the Khan with the faux leather vest and the red mohawk. He tilted a rifle against his shoulder and nodded. "Help you find that one," he said. "Good tracker."

...

The trail doubled back, looped around. Disappeared.

They followed the blinking icon until the icon vanished. What did that mean. What did that mean.

Craig was younger and faster than him. But he was also sick and in a weakened state of mind.

He blamed himself. He had tried to help Craig the way he knew how. Maybe that wasn't the right way. He thought giving him something to do.. giving him good work. Did he do something wrong at McCarran?

What could he have done?

Was this purely his wife? Was this Bitter Springs? What was this, and where did it come from?

Was it the stealth device after all. Had it finally tipped him over the edge.

 _Did it get to me too? These dreams.. these visions? Not from the gods or my gunshot wound? Am I mad? Am I already dead?_

 _Am I bound and gagged in a town cemetary?_

 _Am I hanging on a cross in Utah?_

Garcia knows where he must go. A place the others cannot follow.

He waits for exhaustion to take them. He waits for them to rest a moment and regroup.

That is when he sends ED-E the commands, and that is when he slips away and punches the button on his other gauntlet.

...

The courier is terrified. He could not lose Craig. He could not lose Craig like this. He could not lose Craig to Cottonwood Cove.

He seems to travel faster like this. The world blurring by. There is a sensation of pain but it seems far away, like it happens to someone else.

On that night, he had meant to stop by Craig's room and talk with him. Thank him for the new boots at least. He meant to tell him how proud he was to see Craig standing with First Recon and how everyone was looking at him. The colonel even shook his hand!

He'd meant to check on him.. but then he had been selfish, thinking of Arcade Gannon laying out with his book.

 _I'll see him in the morning_ , he'd decided.

It is growing dark now. Craig won't live to see another day.

A coyote yips and howls somewhere, or is that the ghastly laughter of a vengeful spirit?

...

It is a coyote.

He sees the coyote when he stumbles up to some buildings for water. He saw a house and a shed and a pump. It's dark now, maybe no one will notice. He was watching for the lights to come on-- he won't let anyone know he's here, but if people come out on the porch with a lantern and guns, he'll tell them he needs water, he's looking for a friend.

Then he saw the dog-- but it wasn't a dog.

The buildings are dark and a coyote stands on the porch.

He hears ED-E hovering up behind him, but the eyebot doesn't attack.

The coyote merely watches.

It licks its red muzzle.

The Trickster had put it there. The Trickster's coyote.

 _You know what you must do!_ and a flash of tail as the animal vanished.

The door of the home was open. There was a spear stuck to the door.

The two old folks must have lived here alone, squatting here maybe, in this old house on the hill from before the war. They were both dead in the living room, and the light was coming in from the broken windows. Red pawprints everywhere. The smell was hideous.

He went through the home. There was a legionary dead in the back yard, dead with a dead dog.

This, too, a sign from the gods.

Unshed tears burned in his eyes. This was what he had to do.

He touched the leather armor on the legionary corpse. Some prodding, some pulling, and the armor gave way with a sick squelch of a sound. Disgusting. He would have to wash it under the pump. There had to be some cleaning powder. But it would have to pass.

He went into the bathroom. Shaving soap, a straight razor.

He stared at the reflection in the cracked mirror.

...

He cut himself shaving. It was the best he could do. It would still be dark when he got there. _Please, please let it be in time._

The shade of Carla Boone rocked in the rocking chair, a hideous bundle held to her breast. Her twisted gold hair everywhere. Her sharp teeth. Her pale skin with the blue veins. Blood soaks through the bundle.

We're going to be a family again the shade hisses.

He'll never let them get Craig.

...

ED-E shows him where to go.

In his heart, he knows.

"You are a good machine, a good friend. Even though he didn't trust you, you were the one that tried to save him."

ED-E said nothing back. Never did.

"If this goes wrong and I die.. I will tell your people that you were a good American."

...

He runs as fast as he can.

His feet have healed better than his hands.

His heard pounds in his chest.

He hears the rifle.

It is too late by the time that he gets there.

Oh gods, he got there just in time to see him die.

If he had been faster--

If he had not stopped--

If he had not laughed around the breakfast table while Boone resigned himself to die--

A good blow from the butt of his own rifle.

No. No. No.

 _O gods.. why must you take the good ones and leave the bastards like me and Graham to live forever!_


	17. Chapter 17

It was the boy's first time pulling patrol duty, some green boy from outside Flagstaff. He'd come west to fight with the Legion at Hoover Dam.

His name was Lucius, after the name his father took when he joined the red banner, but here in Cottonwood he is known by the cruel nickname Dento.

It is because he has a gap between his teeth. Sometimes, when he is excited, he whistles when he talks.

Dento answers to the name because he has to, and because he wanted the others to like him. He was so proud marching away from Flagstaff while his mother wept. Remember your father! Make him proud!

Ay, gods! Had he wanted to be in the Scorpions or in the Dragons! Or hell, even in the Cyclopes, led by Centurion Rutillus.

Growing up in Flagstaff, he had raced up and down Santa Fe Avenue, trying to squeeze his way through the crowd for a look at the triumphs-- none more amazing than the spectacular return of Hell Hound Centuria.

But no, none of these-- his boyhood friends had all become Scorpions, Satyrs, Lions. The drillmaster shoved a helmet in his hands, said, "Minotaurs," and then, "if you last a month."

His friends tried to joke with him on the way there, trying to keep his spirits up. His lanky friend Celsus said, "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of opportunity to stand above your peers.. because they'll be on all fours, eating the dead."

There were all sorts of rumors about Centurion Aurelius. That he lets his old tribal friends do what they want. That they still live in old tribal ways. To eat flesh and do evil in the night.

An hour before the ferryman brought him over, he smelled the smell of Cottonwood Cove. And he knew then from that smell, and the hard eyes of the boatmaster.

Oh gods. The beatings, the rapes, the slaves wailing day and night.

Where was the honor? Where was the glory?

He remembered the flashing golden armor of Marcus Decimus, the dead commander of Hell Hound Centuria, as he led his men down Santa Fe Avenue toward the steps of Flagstaff Courthouse. There before Great Caesar and the Legate he drew off his crested helmet and offered the spoils of war.

 _Domine, I bring you the cavalry saber of Captain Garcia of the Arizona Company. As you have commanded me, so I have done. Yuma is yours. Let no man say they showed dishonor._

So different the dignity of the capital, with the stink of the camp!

Yesterday, the huge bastard Gurges forced a slave woman to suck him through the fence in front of her family. Her husband screamed so much that Gurges threatened him: if he did not take her place he would kill them all. The husband refused to suck. Gurges killed the rest. Then the husband sucked, and Gurges killed him anyway.

Aurelius was so angry to lose the slaves that he had Gurges killed, and if now if you walked back into the Cove, that enticing woodsmoke smell was his meat turned over the cooking fire.

And everyone here knew. And nothing could be done.

Lanius had been the centurion of the Minotaurs. And now Lanius was Legate.

Dento feared that Caesar would die, and he begged the gods to give that terrible woman his heir.

He prayed every night that Vulpes Inculta would find a way to kill Lanius the Butcher... and make him stay dead.

When they pulled him for patrol duty, he was kneeling before his bedroll with a terracotta figure in his hands. He was tired. He had been up an entire day already. Starting to see things.

He didn't know he wanted to go on a patrol-- he hadn't been on patrol before. But one of the stronger, older boys didn't feel like it, and he threatened Dento into taking his share.

In a wild, exhillarating, completely terrified way, he is glad he did.

When they all hesitated, it was he who killed a First Recon man.

Lucius Dento stood over the body of the sniper who had killed so many of them already. He had struck the profligate with his own rifle, and now the body slumped at his feet.

He was breathing heavily, which caused a whistle of air through the gap in his teeth.

The others stared in awe.

He slowly, slowly bent down and reached a hand to take the red beret.

The face beneath it was younger than he expected. It could have been his older brother.

Then he stood up with the red beret in his hand.

"O gods, o mighty Olympus, I, Lucius Minicius of Flagstaff, offer this First Recon maa-aa," the word man ended like a bleat. Oh no!

Dento was aware of the others scrambling up, scrambling back, leaving him to face a rapidly approaching figure.

...

Dento should have challenged him or shot him or something, but the man in Legion armor strode so purposefully out of the dark that he seemed like he should be there.

In the moonlight they saw he was an officer, a man of perhaps forty years, a lean runner's build with close-cropped salt and pepper hair. He ignored the rest of them and dropped down to put a bandaged hand against the throat of the sniper.

" _Salve_ , stranger," Libo called out uncertainly.

The stranger said nothing. He felt for the pulse and then his eyes shut.

" _Salve_.. what is, uh, the password," Publius said.

Lentulus cocked his head and said, "Hippogryph!"

"You fucking moron," Libo snapped, "you were supposed to ask him that--"

The stranger let out a small tense breath of relief. The sniper must be dead, then.

"He's dead, then-- a good kill," Dento started to say, "and worthy in the sight of the go-"

The stranger's eyes flew open. "Shut up. Who's in charge here?"

He stood and his fury washed over them. His eyes demanded of them. His deadly voice. "Which one of you maggots? Well?"

Libo started to point out that the squad leader was dead down the hill. He motioned and said, " _Salve_ , sir, Titus is--"

"Say _salve_ to me one more time."

"Sir, uh, Titus was the squad leader," Dento said quietly, "but now he resides in the realm of the gods."

This only seemed to enrage the man further. "Noo," he said, "he resides on his face on the bottom of the hill because he didn't fucking follow oooorders! What the fuck are you doooing? Who told you to be here?"

Libo's eyes widened. "We were on patrol!"

"I didn't ask you! No. Let me talk to you. What is your fucking name."

"Uh--"

"Uh? What kind of Roman name is UH? Holy shit, they'll let anyone in now!"

"Ego sum--"

"Oooh no you don't, you don't get to speak my language!"

" _Nomen meus--_ "

" _Nomen MEUS?_ What in the SHIT! Holy shit. Stop. Just stop there. You couldn't dribble Latin if the ghost of Wheelock fucked you in the face! YOU. " His eyes snapped to a different victim. "Who are you!"

Oh no. Not him-- he had actually never done anything wrong, but he just stood out, how big he was, how physically huge and bald, like a big baby. He never hurt anyone. But he said, "I'm Lentulus, sir."

"Holy fuck-- I believe it." Lentulus meant slow. "Son you are the biggest retard baby I have ever seen outside of this one." He toed the corpse of the sniper. "Why are you smiling? Is something funny?"

"No, sir."

"NO? Then what's wrong with your FACE?"

His expression fell.

"You mo-rons are the reason we all have to speak English now! I can't stand this! It feels filthy in my mouth! I feel like I have just spent the whole night drinking bitch drinks and blowing profligates! Do you like to blow profligates, soldier?"

"No sir!"

"DO YOU?"

Completely terrified at this point, one of them accidentally blurt out, "Yes sir!"

"Then you, you son of a bitch--" The officer singled him out with an angry pointing finger and literally everyone else fell all over themselves to scramble away from him. "You're going to love Vegas! The rest of you maggots-- you, what was your name! Did you figure it out yet, son?"

Libo got out, "Libo, sir--"

"Who said you could be out here, Libo?"

"Nobody said, sir, we--"

" _Then why the fuck are you out here with a fucking First Recon sniper on the fucking loose!_ "

Like any bully with the attention turned on him, Libo floundered. "We heard shots and came to defend the camp, sir."

"And you got your buddies killed! Holy shit! It took all of you just to kill this one!"

"We didn't know he was here!"

"So you're telling me you didn't know where you were going or what you were doing."

"No that's not what--"

"No, sir."

"No, sir, we--"

"Fuck's sake, boy-- stand at attention when you address an officer! Who is the squad leader now." The man's head turned sharply. The gray eyes pierced him. "You? Is it you, Lucius Municius of Flagstaff?"

Dento swallowed. "Yes, sir."

"Give me a reason not to have the whole lot of you whipped. One reason."

Dento took in a deep breath. The man came back to him and he found himself staring into a stormy face. "When.. Titus was killed, we waited for the lull in the firing to swarm his position."

The man was middle to late thirties, a cruel twist to his mouth, a strong jaw with a thin jagged cut across the neck. The cut bled. Very slowly, in that low dangerous voice, the man said, "What did he do wrong."

"The sniper should move after he takes a shot," Dento said carefully, afraid that the sh-sh sound will make his teeth whistle. He hoped the enunciation would make him sound more confident. "Or else he'll give away his position."

The man stared a stare of iron.

"And his rifle jammed," Dento said. "I looked at it and he got sand in it. He was careless with his weapon."

The way the man stared reminded him of an angry dog, hackles up, stern. And then how a dog suddenly looks away to some distant happening. His eyes snapped away, and then he said quietly but forcefully, "Fall back, now. Down the hill. Go."

They stood around a moment.

"MOVE."

They scrambled down the hill in a slide of gravel. Dento saw the man kick at the sniper's left arm, and then he followed, drawing out a pistol.

A red light shot across the darkness.

"Take cover!" the officer hissed, and his bandaged hand fell across the nape of Libo's neck, pushing the boy behind the boulder. He was last to duck down.

"Do we have everyone, count everyone," he said when he crouched in with them. They all looked wildly among themselves, and then Dento nodded.

"That's all of us, sir."

The officer nodded. "All right," he said softly but firmly. "We're in a sniper situation. You've been trained for this."

Libo swallowed. "I.. you.. you find cover."

"Good. The sniper shoots because he sees you. You don't want him to see you. You want to make him work at it.. because then you'll see where he is."

A red laser shot somewhere else now. Scaurus flinched.

"It's all right, son. You're safe behind cover. Keep your wits. We're behind cover, right. So then what?"

They look at each other. "Um."

He waited patiently, calmly, in the face of danger. "What do you know about First Recon?"

Another red flash.

"They killed Boar Centuria at Boulder City, the Hydras too."

The officer sighed a deep hnnnn sound. "Noooo.. work with me, boys." His expressive face took on almost a pleading look. "Are you quite possibly the stupidest squad in Cottonwood Cove?"

"Sir, our decanus says so," Lentulus said in his childlike voice.

And the officer looked away with a smile. There was almost a palpable relief among the soldiers-- no, he wasn't here to just mindlessly yell at them and frighten them. There had been a point to it. When he turned to them again, he showed them an exasperated frown of tough love and spoke to them in a voice like velvet over steel.

"First Recon operates in pairs. That sniper wasn't alone. You think you got him.. but there was someone else on the team. There's always at least two of them. They never go alone. They've always got a friend. Right now.. his buddy's looking after him."

Libo grasped desperately onto the shift into kindness. He had been so angry and so mean, and now he might be nice. They were like puppies who had been growled at, and now the big dog relented. "What do we do, sir?"

"Not a damn thing, soldier. This is far above your level. I won't send you into harm's way. It's not your fault you're young and inexperienced. I won't let you become another Titus. You're to report back to Cottonwood Cove."

Dento nodded. "Yes sir."

"Tell them First Recon is in the area, you don't know how many, but they have the goggles that see in the dark. They could be dug into any number of positions up there."

"Yes, sir."

"So glad you found us when you did, sir," Lentulus said-- so dumb to say, but so true. Dento didn't know what they would have done. Libo and Verres and the others, they could fight well enough, but it would have all fallen apart the instant things took a poor turn.

"I know, soldier. Stay sharp."

The man looked between them, and his eyes judged. In a great tone of mercy, he murmured, "I won't tell your commanding officer about this. I suggest you do the same. A whipping's the last thing you need right now-- you've been through enough. Am I understood?"

A terse chorus of yes-sirs and thank-you-sirs, and someone tried to thump a Roman salute--

"Hnnnng.. Don't salute an officer when a sniper's in the area! Now scram. You're dismissed."

One by one they broke cover to run down the trail to the next obstruction. The man watched them, eyes narrowed, before he looked out over the boulder. The red flashes again. Some of it came close to the runners!

The man was rubbing a bandaged hand at his neck, touching the line of blood. Then he looked down at the weird gauntlet at his wrist, and his eyes went to their corners as he regarded Dento.

"You're the last one. You did well to wait for the rest of them to get free."

Dento nodded tersely.

The man put out his hand. "I'll take that," he said.

Dento held the beret tighter. It was an order, but--

"That's a dangerous thing to have, soldier."

After a moment, Dento relinquished. A nervous smile broke out on his face. "It's better you have it, domine, perhaps it will come into use. You could.. you could switch your uniform with the dead sniper, put on the beret, and sneak back around! Pretend to the others that you were separated and then kill them."

The man snorted and grinned. "Son, you had better thank Daddy Jupiter that my slapping hand's tired. Where would you GET such a crazy idea?"

This close, in the last minute or so, his fluttery suspicion had been confirmed. It wasn't until he saw the man smile that he knew for certain-- why, everyone had heard that scandalous story how he chipped his tooth.

"Oh, from you, sir-- isn't that what you've always said, a crazy enough to work is good enough for me? All those stories about your disguises? Your men, sir, they're all crazy!"

...

The legendary centurion went stock still. His hand was still holding the sniper beret.

"I don't know how you did it, sir," Dento gasped, and a whistle escaped from his tooth.Ah, blast! "Everyone truly believes you're dead this time. Dead for real! To think we all thought you died in the Utah! You've been here the whole time for the Mojave operation."

Marcus Decimus shut his eyes. Then he reached for his pistol.

"I-I-I won't tell anyone, sir," Dento said quickly. "I know how important it must be if you've been here so long. I-- I'm so glad you ran into us tonight. I promise we're better prepared than we look, it's just-- "

Marcus Decimus sighed. "You're a clever boy, Lucius Municius. I trust you'll keep this to yourself. I know it will be hard-- but you must be stoic."

Dento nodded eagerly. "Between you and me, sir?" he whispered.

The centurion indulged him to continue.

"I'm so glad you're here. You must know with Great Caesar so sick.. and.. and the Legate.. it's so awful here in Cottonwood Cove. I never wanted to be a Minotaur." He seized on the opportunity. "Let me help you!"

Decimus slowly smiled, sadly smiled. "Be strong, Lucius. We must do as we must. Trust in the gods and yourself. Your father watches you. He was a good man, and a good soldier."

With that the centurion vanished as by magic.

...

Marcus Decimus Augustus, centurion, former commander of Hell Hound Centuria, one-time Champion of the Legion, swore up and down as he hauled Boone's fat ass across the desert like the last fucking labor of Hercules.

"Damn it, Craig," he grunted. "I'm too old for this shit. If I inspect that rifle and find you let sand get in it, so help me.. "


	18. Chapter 18

Boone's eyes look terrible.

Decimus cradles his skull, tilting the young man’s face underneath the glowing light from his Pip Boy. The blood vessels are all swollen. The pupils remain large. No reaction to the light source. Already a bruise is forming around the eye nearest to where Lucius Minicius Junior struck him with the butt of his own rifle.

There are other bruises underneath his shirt, and a cut bleeds on the outer edge of his arm. He tried to fend off a machete. The jammed rifle permitted them to swarm him.

He used to fear that Boone would have regained consciousness during that ridiculous episode, but now-- now he fears the sniper will never awaken.

His shoulder hurts, his bad one. When they nailed him up there they stretched that arm too far. The weight of his body hanging hurt it ever after. Tightened up the range of motion.

He has to take a break. So tired, so thirsty. He wanted to find his way back to the farmhouse but he can’t find his way back. He wanted to change his clothes. People will see him like this. They wouldn’t understand. He can’t find his way back.. he can only go away from Cottonwood Cove, his icon blinking west across the vault device map.

Decimus hopes he will find the others soon. Gannon will know better what to do. Manny and the tracker will be able to find them.

Please give me the chance to explain. Please let me say something. Don’t let it go black. The last thing I never see..

...

The desert wash glowed pink from gray as dawn came to the eastern skies. From the vantage point of a carbonate outcropping, Manny Vargas scans the joshua trees in irregular rows and columns below. There was movement earlier and he stretches now with his rifle at the ready.

The Khan with the red Mohawk brought them here. In the night they found a raided farmhouse and a pile of the courier’s clothes. A cracked mirror and a bloody sink with clippings of messy hair.

Veronica was leaning heavily on Driver Nephi’s iron by now, using it for a walking stick. Her eyes were red from tears, which she had attempted to hide from them in shame.

Manny Vargas takes in a sudden gasp. His body goes tense.

Arcade came closer, knelt down, to hide his height in the lee of the boulder. “Do you see something?”

The sniper says nothing. He holds his cheek close. His eye looks into the scope. He lets out a breath slowly through parted lips and no air moves in his system. The pad of his finger shifts down to touch the trigger. Begins to pull.

Then Manny takes the finger off and lets out a tough breath. “I need you to look in the scope and tell me if that’s your guy.”

...

Deposits of gravel shift and slide underneath their running feet. Clumps of tough desert growth hold the ground firm until they hit the sparse forest of joshua trees. The sun has not yet fully dawned but there is a light, and it is a weird glowing hour that does not seem real.

Boone slouches against the scratchy bark of a joshua tree. Livid bruises show on his sunburned skin. His stubbled head is in the bandaged hands of a man in legionary armor.

He knows they are coming. You can hear them crunching along the gravel as they run, and then the puff of boots over sand.

Very gently, he spreads his hand on Boone’s scalp, and then he stands. He uses the tree to steady himself.

The legionary appears to be in his late thirties, his close-cropped black hair glinting throughout with silver. Olive skin and an athletic build show through the missing portions of his battered red leather armor. He is dirty all over, sweaty and grimed, with a thin slash of a cut from his ear under his chin.

Only the boots are new.

Metal gauntlets brace each arm, and bandages loop his palms and keep his fingers free.

Manny Vargas shoulders his rifle as they come up close. The other khan holds his distance.

Despite the dilapidated state of his armor, like some mad gladiator with a haphazard lorica, the legionary bears himself with great dignity. He stares Arcade squarely in the eye, a look that seems to last eternity. Arcade looks on the handsome face of grave regard.

The man lets out a breath.

“They swarmed him when his rifle jammed,” the legionary tells them. “He seemed to regain consciousness about an hour ago, but he didn’t seem to know where he was.” His lips tighten. “I tried to keep him awake.”

Arcade snaps back into the moment. He nods quickly and sets in at once, rushing past the legionary to see to Craig. Manny hands his rifle to the other Khan, and he follows.

Veronica is not long after, throwing the club aside in the sand. Her eyes are wet.

ED-E re-appears through the stand of joshua trees, whiskers flared back.

After a tense moment of looking over Boone, touching Boone, all of them crowded in with their friend, Arcade half-stammers, “Definitely a concussion, but there’s nothing we can do for him here. Thank God you got to him in time.”

Veronica runs her hands over the stubbled scalp, a thin sound whining from her throat. The sight disturbs him too, such a stupid small detail. Boone always shaves, always keeps himself clean and tight.

“His beret,” she whispers, digging out the stained, wadded-up piece of wool from his belt. “Oh, Boone, what did you do?”

“Where did you find him?” Manny holds his hand on the nape of Boone’s neck. He twists a look back to the courier, who stands apart. “Did he really.. did he really try to storm their camp?”

“He certainly had his mind set on it,” the courier replies, “but his rifle gave out.”

“Got to tell you, man,” Vargas murmurs in a deadly tone, “you were about a whisper away from a hole in your head.”

The courier touches grimy fingertips to his face. “I thought as much,” he answers. “I would understand.” When he smiles, Arcade’s heart breaks.

“But Manny picked out you were wearing a Pip Boy and NCR issue boots,” Veronica says, and her voice comes out hoarse, flat, unlike her usual sarcastic waver. “And then I saw ED-E. Oh God.. did you really go down there to get him back?”

They look at him, and he only shakes his head. “I owed it to him,” he says. “You’ll have to carry him from here.. I—I can’t, not any further.” The crack in his composure reveals his exhaustion, his fear. He seems to think he will not accompany them.

Arcade shoulders off his lab coat, half-red from dust and salt-encrusted at the armpits, terrible from abuse. “I have to say, Mister Chris, that is about the craziest costume you’ve come up with yet. You crazy bastard you. You and your disguises."

He pushes the balled-up lab coat into the courier’s trembling hands. Doesn't look in him the eye.

...

No-Bark Noonan backs away from the courier. “I knew it,” he cries. “I knew they were coming back to take us. They ain’t gonna take me, no sir.” He ducks behind a sheet of corrugated metal. “No sir, you ain’t takin’ me alive!”

Other people of the town come out for Craig’s return. Children come up from their game. Cliff Briscoe briskly dismounts the stair from Dinky’s gift shop. “Oh my God, what did they do to him?”

Daisy Whitman is as welcome a sight as Arcade has seen.

…

Arcade feels like he is washing up a big boar for the county fair. It takes both of them to wrangle Boone into the shower. Dimly aware of what is happening, he flops heavily under the stream of hot water. They have him down to his underwear and one sock. He seems to weigh a thousand pounds.

Just as they finish up, Boone shocks awake, and he gets a sputtering Manny Vargas by the throat. All three of them soak wet by this point, and Arcade repeats his name until his glassy eyes clear.

“Do you know where you are?” Arcade asks him. “Boone, it’s us.”

Manny pries at the thick fingers. “Cut that shit out, man, it’s me.”

Boone blinks against the falling water and turns his head in, turns it away. His grip loosens, and he steadies now with his hand sliding down to Manny Vargas’ shoulder. “Oh, Christ,” he groans.

Arcade cuts the water.

“It’s all right, man,” Manny tries to reassure him, “nobody’s really hurt, you’re back home now.”

“Carla.”

“She’s gone, Craig,” Arcade tells him. “You got confused.. the stealth device confused you. I’m sorry. I should have stopped all this.”

“You’re safe here,” Manny insists. “Just take it easy. Mister Chris got you, you’re good, he’s good. Okay.”

Boone’s eyes shut tightly, and indescribable pain twists across his swollen face. A depth of sorrow and loss that Arcade Gannon once knew.

Arcade pushes his wet hair back and says, “You’re really dehydrated. We couldn’t give you water while you were unconscious. Once we get some food and water in you, you’ll feel so much better.”

“We’re back in my room, now,” Manny says. “I’m gonna do up a bed for you, and you can just air out a little while. I think Daisy’s got some soup going.”

“Why won’t you let me go,” Boone whispers.

Manny’s face tightens, and his dark eyes swim. “Can’t, man. You know that. We’re brothers.”

Boone lays his head against the tile wall. His lips move, but there is no voice. His mouth makes the words I’m sorry.


	19. Chapter 19

Arcade knew.

He had to know.

The troubled look on his face. The nervous laugh he forced out. His comments about Antler and Chupacabra, the nightkin and the fiends, to make sure the others remembered his other crazy ideas, his other crazy disguises. That haha-nothing-to-see-here-tone of voice.

 _Arcade knows and he is covering for me. Why? For how long?_

It had been a long walk back to Novac, a long walk to an uncertain future.

Marcus tried to catch Gannon's eyes, but his eyes darted away.

He had to know, but would he tell? What would he do?

Arcade and Manny were with Boone now, in the motel room beneath his own. The ancient water heater would struggle hard enough for two at once, so he washed cold. It would keep him alert. Nerves alone would not keep him awake at this point. Tired, so tired-- he needed to talk to Gannon.

His hand came away with a maggot in the shower. Then more. He had tried to clean off the armor he took from the corpse, but the maggots must have tucked into a seam.

That damned armor. Standing in front of them wearing it, standing there for all of them to see. The eyes of the town were on him as he limped up in legion armor and a dirty labcoat. They followed him. He still felt watched, judged, as he washed alone in frigid water with Arcade's little bar of soap.

He needed to speak with Craig while he still had the chance. He would wear his towel down there if he had to; he didn't have any clothes and hadn't thought that far. His throat clenched tight again. Arcade gave him the coat to wear so he wouldn't stand out so much.

He was rubbing his face with the towel as he staggered nude out of the shower. A woman's voice said, " _Ay yi yi. Buenos días!_ "

When he pulled the towel down off his face, he saw Daisy Whitman with an armful of folded clothes. Her young heart showed through in a playful expression.

Marcus coughed and applied the towel to a more particular region. He had always liked Daisy Whitman. " _Buenos días, senorita_."

"Look at you.. I bet Arcade doesn't know what to do with himself. Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

He smiled weakly. One of the things he liked most about the profligates was the way they let their women do whatever they wanted, talk however they wanted. He loved the company of brassy females with a good sense of humor. " _Espero que aquellos estén para mi_."

"Yes, they are. They're Arcade's. The old jeans finally shrank on him, you know how tall he is."

"How's Craig?"

"He's awake and talking, and your little robot is all over him. Why don't you come down, I heated up my soup from yesterday. I used to work as a waitress and then a cook when we lived outside old Francisco. It's always best the next day after it settles. I think Mrs Tunny was going to bring over some biscuits."

She turned away while he dressed. The clothes smelled clean but faintly of Arcade. The man was in the room beneath this one and already he felt a thousand miles away.

"Thank you, Daisy. You are a great lady."

"Oh you. Always trying to butter me up. You don't remember a thing we talked about, did you?"

"When?"

"When do you think, Antler?"

...

Manny Vargas looked away as Arcade stitched Boone's arm. "If that was me, I'd make you cauterize it with a hot spatula. I hate needles."

"You hate needles?" Arcade drew back the forceps with his right hand. The curved sliver of the suture needle pulled the thread through. "I thought you were a Khan."

"I know, right?"

Arcade wished he had a more reliable suture material, but catgut was the best he had in his surgery kit. He'd have to keep a close eye on the wound in the coming days. Keep it clean, keep him from picking at it.

ED-E held a steady light on the operation, and Veronica sat close in by Boone. She had smeared a salve on his new bruises and wrapped bandages to hold it on. The warm air of Manny's room spread the scent of the salve throughout.

"You're being really good, Craig," Arcade murmured. "This has got to hurt. I know. I'm sorry. It'll help you heal faster and keep it from getting infected."

Boone said nothing. No fussing, no flinching. No wetness to his downcast eyes. He held his arm steady, and even if Manny weren't helping him elevate it, he could probably have done it on his own.

He's a glutton for punishment.

Arcade's heart clenched in his chest. Poor Craig. "I want to give you some painkillers as soon as it's safe," he said. "I don't want to interfere with your nervous system any more."

All things considered, Boone was the best patient he'd ever had. Some men would fight you the entire time, cussing and squalling. Others would decide they knew best and tried to treat gunshot wounds or animal bites themselves, wishing they would go away or trying some snake oil cure. The last time that happened, Arcade had to lift the bone saw out of its faded red velvet liner and say, 'I'm sorry, but this is the only way now... '

He'd like to think he had a good bedside manner. Keep them occupied, make it as painless as possible. Broadcast from every pore that you were friendly, that you would help them, that you could be trusted.

As the forceps squeezed the suturing needle and pull it in and out of Boone's arm, Arcade realized in his exhausted state that he had never done this on a friend before. They had always been patients to him. This was personal. Craig was a friend.. and he had failed him.

"Craig," he said, "I know you're feeling terrible right now, but it's not your fault and no one here blames you. We all know Chris loves you and when he gets down here he's going to tell us a crazy story." Arcade's eyes flicked over the suture to find Veronica. He mouthed, 'can you go check on.. ' and saw her nod her head and rise. "I should have put my foot down. I heard rumors about the Stealth Boys, nothing concrete, but I should have banned them. I don't put stock in rumors.. but sometimes, there's a grain of truth."

When Boone finally spoke, his voice creaked like a heavy door on an old rusted hinge. "Might not have hit her full on. Couldn't control my breathing."

"You hit her in the head. She's dead, Craig."

"Chris got shot in the head from twelve feet away. I was at half a mile.. at night--"

Manny broke in. "That Chairman honcho shot him. A guy like that, he doesn't fight for a living. He doesn't have to. He just sits around in his power suit and snaps his fingers for someone else to do his dirty work. He's not trained."

"Manny's right, Boone," came the courier's voice softly but firmly. "You're trained. You're First Recon. You loved her and you wanted to end her suffering. You did."

Veronica led him in to the mattresses all along the floor, and he sat close by Craig. He wore an old pair of Arcade's jeans and not much else, not even his bandages. Veronica was still gaping at his old scars.

Boone was starting to say something again but Garcia-- if that was his name-- cut him off.

"Sitting here right now, Craig, or up there in the dinosaur, you had plenty of time to second-guess yourself. You felt like you couldn't tell anybody. You kept it all in. You just sat there thinking you could have done it differently.. and that's the worst. Trust me. I know. Let me tell you that up there on that hillside.. you didn't have a lot of choices. You did what you had to do. If they caught us in the Cove last night.. I would kill you, then myself. Make no mistake."

No one said anything more just then, as much from the courier's words as from his obvious wounds all on display. Manny's eyes widened once he figured it out, and he stared openly. Arcade wondered if the courier feared they caught on to him; was this his way of showing he couldn't return? Did he really think that would save him, to argue that he was no longer part of the Legion?

Arcade felt obliged to speak, but only the stupid doctor part of his brain seemed to work right now. "Your emotional state is mixing you up, Craig. The human memory is a delicate thing.. horribly inaccurate. Once you start doubting yourself, your subconscious starts to change the way you remembered that night. This, this whole.. I shouldn't have let you guys use the Stealth Boys. I'm so sorry."

The courier shook his head. "It's my fault. It was ultimately my decision to use them. And you know what? We didn't need them, not really. I should have had more confidence in myself and in our abilities. There could have been a way.. we could have done the same work without them. Just differently. A crazier plan. There's always a crazier plan.. " He smiled. "Look at me, Craig."

Boone lifted his head.

A shaky hand worked a glint of metal out of his jean pocket. Boone's dogtags that he left behind with that sorrowful last note. "You're a good soldier, but you're young. It might seem right now like the world has caved in on you.. I know. I know. I know you're hurting. I wish.. I would have given anything to be there that night, Craig. But.. life goes on. You need to live."

Manny's mouth tightened. He had seen the note they found in Boone's clothing when they stripped him. They tried not to read it. "She wouldn't want you like this, man," he said. "She did love you."

"Her death won't be in vain," the courier said softly. "She is the woman who will destroy the legion."

He put out his hand with the dogtags. Craig clasped it and took back what was his. A meaningful look passed between them.

Oh, God..

Arcade tried to see his eyes, but he wouldn't look away from Boone. For the best. He was in a volatile state right now.

Thank God Cliff Briscoe, Daisy, and Mrs Tunny came by around that time. Two of the three squirmed at the sight of Arcade stitching the last of his arm, but Daisy chatted pleasantly and asked where she could put her soup cauldron down. She met Arcade's eyes and winked.

He had asked her to find clothes for the courier, and to remove the battery from his Stealth Boy while she was up there. You could always count on Daisy.

"This is an old recipe from Granny Ida," Daisy was saying, "entrusted to me when I was a young slip of a thing waiting tables. Now Old Ida wouldn't dare tell anybody her secret recipe, but arthritis got her hands and she needed somebody else to put it together some days."

Briscoe and Mrs Tunny were absorbed with horror at the sight of Boone's terrible arm, the huge needle pulling catgut through it, and the crucified man with the gash on his neck.

"You remember those days, Arcade? You used to love playing with the cash register.. you always were so good at math."

...

The soup was best the second day. The peppers and green onions really settled in with the other spices. Arcade never knew the exact ingredients, but it involved avocados, queso, and chili powder. If they were lucky enough to get a chicken, Daisy would save the broth and any leftover scraps.

Sometimes that soup was all they had.

Mrs Tunny brought by two-day old biscuits, and softened up in the hot soup, they were delicious. Some kind of cornbread with jalapenos and tomatoes baked into them. Arcade knew right off that the courier would like them.

The hot meal was good for everyone. Arcade got Cliff to bring by some sugar, salt, and lemons, and he makes up some poor man's lemonade in a chipped pitcher. Not so much for the taste as for a good way to get fluids and salts back into everyone. Dehydration was his major concern, for Craig and the courier especially.

He wanted Craig to drink at least three more glasses of water and pass them before letting the man sleep. He'd been sick back at the Wrangler, and then he'd spent the last two days-- was it really two days-- wandering the desert. He'd been cut with a machete and lost blood. That device screwed with his brain activity and his heart would be working hard enough as it was.

He'd deal with the courier in private. The man seemed comfortable enough among them now, as they ate together, his attitude weary but kind. Arcade knew him and his subtle moods, though. He sensed the wave of unease coming off him. He saw it in his eyes. He knows I know.

No one else seemed to suspect. More than anything, they were curious about the stranger that sat among them, handsome and familiar, with the tell-tale scars.

"Craig, you are always asking me for stupid military stories, and I hate to tell you.. you slept through a good one."

Boone smirked around a mouthful of one of those jalapeno biscuits.

"Man, you got to tell us what happened," Vargas said, shaking his head. "Did you really just sneak in and cart him off?"

The courier smiled. "I dragged him off in all the confusion, that's all. They didn't know what to do. They couldn't believe that Boone was brave enough to come alone. They got to thinking that the hills were crawling with red berets. ED-E swooped down and started to fire on their position, like another sniper, and you should have seen them run back to Cottonwood Cove. I bet they are still in a state of alarm."

ED-E beep-booped with pride.

"Sorry ED-E," Boone mumbled. "You're a good bot."

"Your poor hands, Mister Chris," Veronica said softly.

"Yeah man. I wasn't going to say anything, but damn. Your luck is really bad.. or it's really good. I don't know which. How'd you get that?"

"Oh, just hanging around," the courier replied. "It's what it looks like."

Boone said, "Sort of thought so. About your hands and feet. Back in Nelson." He dropped his biscuit back in his soup bowl. "You'll get your revenge on those sons of bitches."

The courier smiled grimly. "I know."


	20. Chapter 20

It was an eternity. An eternity. He sat only a few feet from the man he needed alone. Boone's injury preoccupied his thoughts on the long walk back, but now, as everyone ate and recovered, slowly winding down, Arcade's thoughts flashed back to the urgent matter at hand.

Arcade endured the mealtime conversation, waiting for the respite. He knew his body needed calories, but the lump in his throat interfered with his ability to swallow. His stomach felt small, tight, and cold, like the hailstones that tattooed their tin-roofed shack in La Mirada.

At last the courier rose to leave. Though he did not look Gannon's way, he must have known the doctor would follow. He had some last words for Boone, even a pat, as though he had not just eaten side by side with his mortal enemy.

Arcade was torn. He wanted to watch Craig a little while longer. He might become sick from eating right off, even soup. Arcade wanted him to drink at least three more glasses of water before he went to bed.

But he didn't want the courier to slip away into the desert. Who knows what he was thinking now, after the stealth field had scrambled his mind. Now that he knew Arcade knew he had been Legion.

There was no delicate way to do this, so Gannon extracted himself in a gawky awkward departure. He left instructions with Manny Vargas and Veronica, telling them signs of dehydration they should watch for-- heart palpitations, light-headedness, muscle scramps, etc-- and how much water Boone should drink, and so on, but Veronica laughed and slapped her knees.

"Will you just go get a room already?" she said. "You guys have been eyeballing each other the whole time."

Vargas shook his head. "If I knew he looked like that, I woulda helped you guys hold him down so you could shave him. I'm so jealous right now. I kinda want to fight him again, I'll black the other eye." He grinned. "Just kidding. Kinda. You deserve a smart guy like you."

Boone smirked. "Heh."

Veronica was slowly patting the back of Boone's head. She couldn't get used to the stubble. "Just remember the patient needs his rest," she said with a wink. "Try to keep it down. You've got some thin walls here in Novac."

Oh for Christ's sake.

...

The noonday heat struck Arcade in the face as soon as he went out of the cool dimness of Manny's room. His doctor's bag was full of bricks. Every step up the stairs reminded him that he had combed the desert in panic the last two days. He wanted to shut his eyes and sink into bed. He wished that he was wrong, so that they could laugh about it and go right to sleep.

Arcade found the door open and went in. The sun's rays softly illuminated the lean upper body of the man standing by the bed.

"Hey.. um," Gannon started out intelligently.

The courier touched the empty battery slot on the gauntlet. He knew now that someone had removed the battery and that the device would no longer work. His head turned and he looked full on at Arcade.

He must have been striking when he was younger, better cared for. Even now, after having known him for a time, after what they have done together, Arcade flushed, felt more nervous than he could possibly be. His heart felt like it was wedged in his throat, and that he was on the verge of choking.

"Close the door."

Arcade pulled it shut behind him and set his doctor's bag onto a chair. A dim hot light came through the drawn blinds.

Only the stupid doctor part of his brain knew what to say. "I didn't get a chance to look at you," he said. "Did you get hurt at all? Any other cuts or bruises? How do you feel?"

The man who picked names from Shakespeare said nothing. His lips parted slightly and Arcade picked up on his irregular breathing.

"I see you have a cut there on your neck."

"Shaving," the other said.

Arcade pulled the door shut behind him, and then he set his doctor's bag down on a chair. "Let me swab it with some antiseptic. That leather armor was probably crawling."

The courier made a motion that put Arcade to mind of coming up on a strange dog. Not skittish, but cautious. Best given space.

"It's uh like what I told Craig earlier," Arcade said gently. "You're in an emotional state right now.. that device interfered with your way of thinking. You're probably feeling paranoid right now.. like you don't know who can trust."

"Can I trust you?"

"Yes. Do you have a reason not to trust me?"

A slow smile crossed his face at last. A slight curve to his attractive lips and a crinkling at the corners of his eyes. He seemed so exhausted. "I don't know yet. I've been thinking about it all the while. It's going to be difficult, judged against your idealistic notions.. the scales weigh heavy. You weren't there. You don't know."

He tossed the useless Stealth Boy on the bed and pulled a nearby chair beneath him. He just flopped with a great large smile now, as though his whole body cried out-- aw, fuck it. "Until six years ago, I served in Hell Hound centuria as its commander. My name is Marcus Decimus."

Arcade came closer to sit nearby on the bed. It sank under his weary body. So it was true, then. "Marcus."

He gave a singular but vigorous nod. "Yes. Hello."

For a moment they stare at one another. Arcade looked away first, and drew his glasses off the bridge of his nose.

Marcus asked softly, "How did you know?"

"Uh.. a lot of things. Little things. Uh. The other.. recently--" Arcade smirked as he cleaned his glasses on his damp shirt. "I think you might have slipped and said something in Latin."

Marcus put a scarred hand across his face.

"But that made me think back to when you and Boone were talking in Spanish a little while ago. You wanted to know where he picked it up, and he said Manny, his wife, and you asked-- okay it's drawn out but you were supposed to say esposa and instead I'm sure now you said esposae. You don't have to decline nouns in Spanish.. that's why it's Spanish and not Latin. And then when you killed Queenie, uh, I don't think you did that to be cruel necessarily. What it looked like, and I guess this is from an anthropological perspective? I don't know, I'm a medical doctor? It looked like something out of a soldier's sacrifice to Mithras. I mean overall you seem very intelligent, cultured, uh, not from here.. you aren't NCR, you didn't come from Navarro. Obviously military. You could have been a ranger, one of the Desert Rangers, a militia like that but.. "

Arcade realized he was rambling. When he put his glasses back on, Marcus came into focus with a look he could never interpret. He took his hands off his knees and made a vague gesture. "And your injury. It all makes sense.. but don't worry. I mean. It's not something the others would pick up on. Not to be all big deal Doctor Gannon or anything.. I just don't think they'd know what they were seeing. Nobody's said anything. With Craig and Manny I think you'd know right away if they knew. Ah-- shit, I'm sorry. I know you care about him.. "

Marcus smiled, then, a sidelong smile. "I suppose here I discover if you will keep my secret as well as when you thought I was an American, now that you now I am a Roman. A poor shadow of one, though I have tried my best."

Despite his words, his body seemed to ease up. A loosening of his shoulders, a somewhat lazy cast to the way he sat there. He seemed almost at peace, as though he accepted that his fate was now out of his hands.

 _And into mine._

Doctor Gannon sighed. "I'm very tired.. you're very tired.. I'm not going to interrogate you after all we've been through. If you're not planning to help Caesar, and I don't think you are, then I won't tell anyone. That's me being completely honest right there. I just need to ask you some questions. You understand? Right?"

Marcus nodded quickly. "I will tell you anything you wish to know." He held his scarred hands palm-out. "You know already I am no friend of Caesar. I haven't lied."

Arcade winced. "I need to know what happened at Cottonwood Cove last night. What really happened."

"It's as I told everyone, more or less. I spared Craig the details, but the patrol overran his position just as I arrived. His rifle jammed and they swarmed him. They were all young and inexperienced, some of them just a couple of snotty-nosed little bullies. They didn't know what to do after that, so it was easy to barge in and take control of the situation. A lot of yelling, as hilarious as it was terrifying."

"And that was it? ED-E fired on you guys, and they ran away?"

"I ordered them back to camp.. gave them the idea that the hills were teeming with First Recon murder machines." Marcus shook his head. "One of them stayed behind after the others were gone. He recognized me. I should have killed him."

Arcade froze.

"He swore he wouldn't tell anyone.. he was convinced it was all part of some crazy scheme of mine. Faking my death. Some sort of operation. I served with his father, a stuttering awkward little goof just like he was. But so earnest. Trying so hard. A good man who died well. It was like looking at his ghost. I couldn't take his life. I'll pay for that, I know.. there's no question whether or not my secret will come to light. Only a question of when and to whom."

"So you're not planning.. you're not a spy."

"No. It is all what it looks like, and it's all as I told you. I hurt my hands.. and I couldn't work anymore."

Arcade swallowed. "So you weren't there at Boulder City."

"If I was.. I would be drinking tequila in the Lucky 38 by now. No.. four years ago I was eating garbage outside New Reno."

He thought of the battered man who limped through the gates of the Old Mormon Fort, how hungry he was. His sad gray eyes. Arcade took in a breath. He needed to know this. "Were you slavers? Raiders? Did you take people?"

"I'm offended that you ask, but you know no better. Aurelius of Phoenix must be your only example, and he and his Minotaurs are not fit to dig latrines for my men. The mission of my centuria was to sniff out fiends and raiders, to hunt them down and kill them. We believed we were the defenders of civilization. But more and more we would return home from long marches and find vicious cowards skulking in the camps.. wretches with hair on their faces, eating food with their hands and long fingernails.. rumors of eating human flesh toward the end, there.. when it seemed all the monsters and horrors on our campaign were now to be found among our own men."

"I've heard that Caesar boasts of conquering some eighty tribes.. but you can't just slap a skirt on somebody and say he's a Roman."

Marcus shook his head. "No, no," he said. "Good gods.. and Fleshcutter from the Hidebarks. Lanius. I heard he is legatus now."

"What happened to you?"

"Caesar was killing everyone in his circle. I think he wanted it to look like I died a hero's death far in the wasteland-- that's the story that goes about now, so I've learned. I suppose I should be grateful he permitted me that.. and not a gruesome public execution on the steps of Flagstaff Courthouse."

Marcus sighed and took a moment to continue. "We were sent away on an expedition into the Utah. I realize now that when the tribals ambushed us that night, they came directly for me.. the frumentarii must have struck some deal with the witchwomen. I don't remember very much, only some shrieking ritual, being paraded about, whipped and beaten, thrown into a snake pit.. I was so thick on peyote I hardly noticed I was the life of the party." A rueful smirk. "At some point I was abandoned in the desert. 'We will let the gods decide,' someone was saying. I was so delirious and hurt and thirsty.. crawling around naked on my elbows.. I might have wept when I saw familiar faces. Gnaius of Scottsdale always hated me, but in that moment, I saw him painted up like one of the Vipers and I thought-- I thought the two of them dressed up in a funny disguise to come rescue me. Then he took out of his leather bag a steel hammer.. he stroked my cheek with it and he said, 'We have made a place for you.' He has this giggle. This disgusting giggle."

His voice thickened then, his eyes looking off to some other place. "Caesar was always paranoid and vicious. Brilliant. A brilliant man. But he was the kind who saw enemies in every shadow, who saw a conspiracy in every conversation. If two people were talking, they were talking about him. I should have seen it when the inner circle died off one by one. Raven Feather. Robinson. Everyone who had a double name, who bought in to his delusion in the beginning, when he was only a petulant man named William Howard from the Followers of the Apocalypse. I'm surprised that Graham survived so long. I suppose I thought that he would pass me over.. that he would trust me because I had trusted him. "

Arcade's eyes were drawn to the trembling of the centurion's hands. They shook from time to time without meaning, but this time, Arcade sighed and felt a deep pang of pity. "How did you survive?"

It was a moment before the centurion could answer him.

"The strangest thing," Marcus said quietly. "I felt it all slipping away.. abandoned by the gods.. but then I saw a man standing before my cross. He looked up at me.. his face was so kind and sad. He said.. _holy shit_ , and he ran all the way back to get the whole farmstead to help me. The Mormons-- I can't ever repay their kindness. They were so gentle and understanding. I owe my life then as now to the mercy of strangers."

Arcade rubbed his face. Hell. No wonder why he had chosen to take a shipment of medicines to the Old Mormon Fort. He must have thought there would be Mormons. "That must have been strange for you, living with them," he said.

"No stranger than them with me, but they had more to draw on." Marcus smiled a vague weary smile. "The children loved me, of course-- always do. I was the Roman soldier for one of their holy dramas. The best they ever had, naturally."

 _Stay focused. Don't let him charm you._

"Do you know.. uh.. if Joshua Graham is still alive? All those rumors about the Burned Man? His punishment after failing to take Boulder City?"

"I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me. I have seen him nearly die on two occasions." There was a slight pause. "I don't know if it would hurt or help to try to find him.."

Arcade stared into the earnest face of the man before him, who watched him intently. He noted offhandedly that the bruise of his black eye was starting to take on a greenish tinge. "Are you serious about what you told Boone?"

"You will have to be more specific, Arcade Gannon."

"About.. fighting against Caesar and Lanius."

"Yes. I know now what I must do. The gods have spared me for a purpose. It is clear to me now that I have a calling.. like the man from Vault 13, like Chitsa of Arroyo. I must put an end to their monstrosity.”

"This is going to be crazy."

Marcus smiled half a smile. "Crazy is fine for me." The smile vanished abruptly. "I would tell everyone if I thought it were best.. I'm not a liar, Arcade. But I don't think Craig could understand right now.. I think that it would hurt him. If the gods decide to place me in his crosshairs one day.. so be it. But I can't let him kill me yet, not before we have even started. I have not wronged him. Promise me you will not tell him."

"I won't tell anyone.. just.. it's a lot to take in." Arcade needed all his strength to get up off the bed. "We're both tired."

The centurion's eyes followed Arcade as he went back for his doctor's bag. He needed something medical to do.

"If this changes your mind, I understand." Marcus spoke now in that deep steady tone. Only his eyes betrayed his sorrow. Who would have known he would be so handsome. "The Mojave will need every doctor she can get."

Arcade was drawing a little jar of antiseptic out of his supplies. "Don't, um, talk like that, okay. I'm going to clean your cut. It'll sting for a second."

Marcus sat still for him, and up close, Gannon could hear his quickened breathing. The man was putting up a brave front for exhaustion. When Arcade's fingers touched him even very lightly, he shivered.

As Arcade braced his head and gently swabbed the wound, Marcus swallowed and said in a thick quiet voice, “I wanted to tell you.. but the flesh is weak. I’m sorry, Arcade. Don’t blame yourself. You have made me supremely happy, and you have my everlasting respect.”

Arcade’s heart sank.

Against his better judgment, Arcade stroked his jaw, and when one of the hands touched his fingers, he kissed that hand. How strange to command such power over a legionary. "Look, this is.. uh, a lot," he said. "But I believe you. You were so lost and hungry.. I don't think you want to hurt anyone. You've been kind to everyone.. to women. Kids love you. Hell.. you didn't want any trouble."

Marcus stepped from the chair with some difficulty, tired and unsteady on his feet. "Stay in this room, you're right above Manny and Boone if they need you. I'll be downstairs."

It was probably better that they slept apart, Arcade knew that. Yet looking at this stranger, who should be his enemy, he still recognized the man who had been his friend and lover. "Don't-- shit, just don't run away, please?"

“I won’t run away. I can’t walk out on Craig. You know that.”

...

Arcade leaned against the shower tiles and tried to determine if he had made a mistake.

 _Enemy of my enemy?_

Was he? He had helped the NCR here.. he hadn't fought against them back in the war.

His care and concern for Craig were genuine. He had been good to everyone. An interesting traveling companion. A fair boss. He had brought some of worst monsters in the Mojave to justice, and he had given Boone and Veronica the credit. That had been a fine thing he did for Craig when they brought in Cook-Cook.

Flopping face-down on the bed, Arcade searched his brain for some way that Boone would understand. He'd come around to forgiving ED-E, hadn't he? No.. no. Dear God, if he'd been that way over a robot..

Arcade realized he was too exhausted to sleep.

He felt a dim hot light coming through the blinds. The room was warm. The bed was too small for his long legs, and too empty. He realized after awhile that there really was only one other vacant room in the town of No Vacancy.

Shit.. should he go check on Chris? Garcia? Marcus. No. If that's what he wants, as superstitious as he is. Afraid of the ghost of Carla Boone. Maybe that is what he needs.

Arcade had worked himself around and now he lay looking at the ceiling. Too tired to sleep.

He peeled himself off the bed and went to his lab coat. He pulled out the battered little book and brought it back to the bed. Only a couple more pages left.. and he knew now why Marcus had wanted so badly for him to read it.

He picked the caravan card out of _Lord of the Flies_.

...

There was only one spare room left in Novac, and the door opened as to a tomb.  
Dust motes swirled in the rays of light.

The sour smell of the room choked him, the smell of old sweat and despair.

He half-expected to see her crouching in the shadows, the shade of Carla Boone.

Decimus was in her realm now. She would be strongest here.

“I have not wronged you,” he whispered. “I have not wronged you.”

He looked for the flash of eyes in the gloom, but he saw only shapes of overturned furniture and lumps of clothes.

Something glass crunched underneath his boot. He saw the old brown bloodstains soaked into the rug.

So much pain and sorrow in this room.

A broken mirror. A messy bed.

This was how Craig had lived. Nights of silence out there, and then, in this room, an interrupted sleep.

 _I should have seen this. I should have helped him sooner._

A bullet hole in the cracked wallpaper. A crowded ashtray. A pill bottle. Somewhere in the tangle of clothes on the floor, he discovered a half-burnt photograph. He held it up for inspection. Boone and his wife. Carla was nothing as he imagined. No delicate flower. No golden hair.

The woman in the photograph was a dusky goddess, mostly Hispanic-- ah, of course-- and some African ancestry. Her hair was a wavy black cascade. She was older than he supposed, more of an age with Decimus and Arcade. She had a vivid smirking smile as she smashed cake in Craig’s face for all eternity.

The woman from the nightmare had been only that, a nightmare, an evil spirit. The woman with the veiny face and lank gold hair had been a reminder of Kuchira, the sybil, who screeched in so ugly a voice.

He had not dreamed of the woman who was taken from this room.

He looked into her face, and the spell was broken.

He sat down on the mattress.

“You did not torment me after all,” Marcus whispered. “Ah, great lady. I am sorry to have feared you like some monster... Carlita, _te vengaré_.”

Sleep took him.

There were no dreams.


	21. Chapter 21

Daisy Whitman stood in the doorway with the late afternoon sun setting over her shoulder. She looked in at the long body sprawled up on the bed, a book flapped on his chest.

She experienced the sudden twinge of a bittersweet memory: Israel passed out on his duffelbag, in full armor but for his helmet, a stained paperback about to slip from the fingers of his enormous gauntlet.

Sometimes, Arcade reminded her so much of his father. There was very little of Margaret in him at all, thank the Lord.

She went to wake him up just how she used to, like the good old days. She took hold of one of those long socked feet and gave it a shake.

"Time to get up! Time to get up!"

One bleary eye opened and her very accomplished doctor groaned like the sulky twelve year old that he once had been. "Five more minutes."

Daisy smiled. "Aw, I hate to wake you up, but you’ve slept all day. If you get up now you can spend a few hours awake and go back to bed normal.”

“Ugh.”

“Your friend is down there in Boone’s old room. You can spread the misery by go waking him up.”

Arcade blinked blankly for a few moments, and then he groaned, “Yeah. You’re right. I should go.. um. Check on everyone."

"It's been all quiet. The only thing that happened of any note is that girl Veronica went and shaved Boone's head while he was asleep."

"Yeah. Uh. Veronica looks little, but she clanks big when she walks."

Daisy chuckled softly. "I like her. I hear you've all scavenged up some holotape you can't get to work?"

Arcade was slowly getting his legs swung around and putting his feet on the floor. "Holotape?"

"You had a holotape you can't get to work."

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah... we found it at some.. junk seller. Chris got it for me."

"I thought his name was Peter?"

"Sometimes. But he was called Chris at the time."

Daisy nodded. "That poor young man. I saw what they did to him.. and then someone shot him, after all he's been through. Can't blame him for changing his name. Lord knows we've done that enough. What's he want to be called now?"

Arcade was feeling around for his glasses. "We'll have to see what he wants."

"Is everything all right with you two?"

"I don't know. Yeah." He shrugged that shrug that meant let's not and put his glasses on. He promptly squinted, took them off, and started to clean them with the edge of the bed sheet.

She knew he never really liked to talk about it. He had a practical outlook on relationships-- you had to be careful letting anyone too close, and, well, it was difficult enough to find someone of a different persuasion. Although New Vegas sure had a whole lot of 'em. Something in the water, maybe.

Just as she was turning away with an "All right," he cleared his throat. "Daisy. Can I.. can we talk about something?"

"Sure can!"

Arcade pitched his voice very low. He did not meet her eyes. “I want to tell the courier.. about me. Just me. None of the others, no names. Just me.. but that kind of.. well that draws you into it too. By inference. He already knows that you raised me.. I could say that you found me, though, that's true enough anyway."

As he spoke, she came to sit on the edge of the bed. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I don’t know yet. I'm not going to make any rash decisions, but I wanted to clear it with you in case we all wander off somewhere. I know he won’t tell. When Craig found out that ED-E was Enclave tech, he was pretty upset about the whole thing at first. But Chris talked him down."

Daisy nodded. "We've discussed it ourselves. I asked him where he got such a funny-looking robot. Purely scavenger interest. He'll talk your ear off if you give him half a chance.. "

Arcade put his glasses back on and looked over to her. He was searching her face for approval. "He’s said.. he felt sorry for the normal people who had to pay for what Richardson and his cronies did." There was a hesitant bump in his voice, and then he went on, with more intensity, "You know it's like for the first time someone has a reasonable opinion of the whole thing. Not just pointing fingers and burn the witch. I, he just.. " The impassioned note went out of his voice and he gave a ludicrous laugh. "He's not all wrapped up in the NCR propaganda, you know, the noble Chitsa sinking the evil oil rig with her spear raised to the sky. He knows there were moms and boy scouts who went screaming into the deep. Those are almost exactly his words to me."

Even in the flat heat of the afternoon, Daisy felt a chill of goosebumps up her arm. Very quietly, she confessed, "I asked him flat-out if he had been part of the Enclave— he said no. He thinks we're all dead."

"I can't let anything happen to you, Daisy.. don't give me an answer now. Think about it. I wouldn't say anything just yet. I'm not going to slide the bannister, kick down his door, and burst into _The Grand Old Flag_ for chrissakes.. "

She let out a whistle. "Well that would be a sight to see! Good way to get shot."

He smiled, and took her hand in both of his. Ah, her hand with the liver spots now. When did she get so old.. "I just can't let anything happen to you, Daisy. After all you've done for me. God knows I've made some bad decisions.."

She gave him a squeeze. "If you feel it's the right thing.. you have my blessing. Just promise me you'll tell me what he says. Who knows what he'll have to tell you."

Arcade reached over and gave her a hug. Oh, her boy. "Don't hug too tight," she said, "I've got engine grease on me." Of course that made him do just that.

"If I tell him, you can talk to him yourself. He likes you a lot anyway, I think it would blow his top to hear all your stories."

Daisy smiled. “You don't have to tell anybody.. but maybe it would help you to find someone who could understand or appreciate where we come from."

A shadow went across his face for just a moment. All those times they had to pack in the night, running hand in hand. Jumping trains or throwing in with a caravan. Rehearsing their stories, their names. Once when he was just a gangly boy he'd thrown his arms around her and pleaded, _This time can you be my mom_ in such a desperate voice. "I'm sorry to drag you into this, Daisy. I could just say you found me. Really. We moved a lot because you were afraid someone would try to get me.. I don't know. I'll have time to think of something."

"Oh no. Now I'm curious to know what he has to say. I’m too old to fear they’ll come after me, Arcade. I trust your decision.. " her voice came lightly, "and I won't be around forever."


	22. Chapter 22

He was in Craig's room and Craig's room was empty.

The sad sight of the overturned motel room made Arcade's heart clench. He started to breathe heavy, taking in a quick lungful of stagnant air. He went in a couple steps to search around-- was he in the bathroom maybe-- and his foot caught on the side of a high heel and he stumbled.

Fuck.

Marcus wasn't there.

He ran out and froze a moment in the courtyard. Whoever was in Dinky would have seen someone run off. He bolted that way just when he heard a huge laugh, a laugh he would know anywhere. Oh, thank God.

Arcade found his centurion sitting on a huge old tractor tire with No-Bark Noonan, both of them drinking from the same clay jug. Crazy old Noonan was eating up some biscuits-- ah. Marcus must have brought him something to eat.

The slanting rays of late afternoon light were exceptionally good to Marcus. He was wearing one of Arcade's old shirts, some shirt that had once been white, had once been buttoned. Despite the silver that stole throughout his black hair, Marcus looked more his age of thirty-eight years with the tighter cut of his hair and the shaven jaw. The black eye that Manny gave him was in a purple-green stage at the moment, but it did not seem to affect his mood.

Marcus flashed a bright grin, looking up from the tattered hat he held in his hands. His shaky fingers were working some strip of metal into the hatband.

Arcade had the idea of a dog slowly thumping its tail, happy to see you.

"Arcade Gannon, did you sleep well?"

"Uh. Out like a light. You?"

Marcus nodded. "The same. You missed the fun, though.. I'm told Veronica shaved Boone while he was asleep."

"She shave Craig Boone like Delilah done to Samson," No-Bark said. You take his hair, you take his power. Now his power gone. That's women for you!"

Arcade shook a fist. "Womennn." He slumped down on the tractor tire with them. How good of Marcus to come out here for No-Bark Noonan. The poor man had been scared to death of him. Looks like he brought the old fellow some biscuits and a tin of Daisy's soup. A keen understanding of what it was like..

"He'll be fine, No-Bark. It'll grow back out and his powers will return. Veronica will protect him. You know I have personally seen her throw a steel barrel almost twenty feet?"

"She throwed a barrel full of feet? Eh?"

Marcus nodded solemnly. "She is a great warrior. Now, your hat is almost ready. Arcade is going to put a spell on it for added measure. Arcade?"

"Uh.. _¿qué?_ "

Marcus gave a fetching wink. " _Teme que los Rojos roben sus pensamientos..._ " He cocked his head at the hat in his hands. " _Le dije que este sombrero mágico se protegerá_."

Arcade smirked. So Marcus told No-Bark that the new lining in the hat would keep the communists from stealing his thoughts. Great. A good way to calm the poor man's fear.. and get him to shade his head in all this sunlight. "I'd be happy to help," he said, and he took the hat when Marcus held it out. "You're about to see the work of a professional."

No-Bark Noonan watched in satisfaction as Arcade blessed the hat with a suitably impressive brand of mumbo jumbo.

Poor man. He'd talked to Strauss about what had happened, but she had shrugged, wiped her bloody hands on her apron, and said frankly it was a miracle that Noonan had survived. At least he seemed cheerful enough. Didn't know any better. Didn't have to.

"There you are," Arcade told him. "But it will only work if you wear it when it's very bright.. and you have to make sure you drink enough water."

...

"We wouldn't have discovered what happened to Carla if it weren't for No-Bark," Marcus said on their walk back to the motel courtyard. "He has a good soul. That must be why Bacchus holds him dear. He does not suffer."

Arcade shook his head. "So apparently he was stung in the brain. If that's really what happened, we could probably learn a lot from his particular case." He added, "I'm surprised by the amount of traumatic brain injuries that people seem to be walking away from-- maybe it's just the toughest wastelander stock passing on the genes.. "

He became aware he was lapsing into nervous nerd-talk again. Despite a messy history of betrayal, Marcus looked as calm as ever. An old dog ready to climb up on the porch for a nap. There was that playful hint of energy beneath the exterior, however.

Son of a bitch thinks he can just walk all over me now, him and his little leather skirt. That is one mental image that is never going away..

Marcus was keeping an eye on the outer fence as they made their way back. There would still be a moment to talk before they came into earshot. Some of Manny's sister's children were out playing in the courtyard, trying to grab hold of ED-E. The eyebot floated just low enough to tease them with an antenna, and then it propulsed just out of reach. He was smiling slightly as he watched this.

Arcade stroked his arm to bring him back. A reassuring slide of his hand that turned into a squeeze. Marcus reacted warmly, and at once.

"I missed you last night," Arcade said,".. well.. earlier. This noon. Whatever."

"Me too," Marcus said. "But it was something I had to do. And there were no dreams."

Arcade smirked. "See.. it was that damn Stealth Boy making you think Carla Boone was out to get you."

"Yes. No. I saw her photograph.. I hadn't dreamed of her at all. Some old memory of our sybil, an evil woman. Not Carla."

"Not your guilty conscience?" He couldn't think of Marcus allowing anyone to harm a woman, not the way he spoke of his wife, not the way he cherished Veronica.

"Perhaps. I would have never permitted that to happen. It goes against everything I stand for. What man of honor could snatch a pregnant woman from her home at night?"

Arcade said nothing for a moment. Farther off, ED-E had floated low enough to allow a child to try and half-climb on it. "I haven't changed my mind, you know," he said. "You're still you."

Marcus smiled a thin sincere smile. "I want to be better," he admitted. "I am trying."

The doctor's s hand stroked across his shaven jaw. Then the pads of his fingers touched near the cut. "How's this, does it itch or hurt?"

Marcus turned his head in close to his shoulder to kiss that hand. "I think I'll live," was his sarcastic reply. "I didn't survive a cross and a grave just to die shaving."

"We'll talk later. I just-- you're going to kill Caesar. Right?"

"And Lanius," Marcus answered. "I cannot allow their tyranny to continue. They are a disgrace to the memory of Rome, and to the gods."

Arcade smirked. "We'll talk later," he repeated. "Ix-nay on the ods-gay, though. People istening-lay."

"What does that mean?"

...

Flecks of bright orange danced in the early evening Novac bonfire.

The dead man's legion armor burned within it.

The leather curled in on itself and blackened, glowed at the edges. The outer layers gave way to show the plastic football shoulder pads beneath.

"Well," Arcade said, "this isn't the first time a bunch of people conspired to kill Caesar, but I gotta say.. post-apocalyptic dino motel sure lends it a touch of class. Shoulda sent a poet."

He was sure that would get old Jeannie May in a tizzy to hear that, but then again, she wasn't hearing much these days without her head. Christ what an episode. Some day they will say that a legendary alliance was formed in the blood of a little old lady.

Veronica pitched her voice. "Friends, Romans, dinosaurs, lend me your ears.. "

Boone grunted over his tin. "Dinosaurs don't have ears," he said.

"Of course they did, they're internal."

In that pissed-off tone of his, Boone said, "I worked the night shift inside of that rex for two years, and I never saw any in there."

Arcade's mouth hung open. Then he shut it and laughed. "Jesus, Craig. I never know if you're serious."

He saw the flash of Boone's teeth for just a second. "Heh."

Boone went about scraping his tin for a second, and then he said, "Which one of you fuckers shaved my head."

"You be careful, Mister Chris could have done it."

"Oh, you'd know if it was me," the courier replied, ruefully touching the cut on his neck.

"Awww. It was me." Veronica smiled. "It just didn't seem right, looking at that stubble on your head. You always shave, even if we're all dirty and pit-stained and there's no water to drink, let alone shave with. You make me feel bad, actually.. I don't even shave my legs as much sometimes, when we're out on the road."

"Speaking of, ah, bald people," Arcade cut in.

Boone nodded. "What's the plan," he said.

The courier set aside his tin and wiped his wrist across his lips. "First thing-- if it's only us, my name is Marco."

Veronica smiled.

"Starting out, we'll need supplies," Marco went on. "Weapons. Ammunition. Armor. No more potato sack for you, Veronica, not when we're doing something dangerous. I've got money now, and I want to see you safe. Anyhow, I will need to speak with Major Dhatri again... perhaps we could work something out. They know we get results. I have business with the King. The issue with the Chairmen needs resolving. There is another matter at Helios One—but don’t worry about that now."

Veronica nodded. "I guess you'll quit the Mojave Express, then?"

The courier considered. "I still have contacts in the Mojave Express.. I'll need help somehow to move supplies. I'll hire out space on a caravan if I have to. Those will be things to think about in the future. As for right now.. I won't lie to you, it will be difficult and it will be dangerous. If you wish to back out, I understand, and will not hold it against you. Veronica.. I do not say this to you because you are a woman, but.."

“Usually when people say something and then say ‘but’, they mean what they just said. It’s okay, Mister Chris. I’m bravely holding back tears.”

“They will look on you and see something to be owned and taken. You are in special danger. If you weren’t as intelligent, skilled, or special as you are, I would have turned you away now with Arcade’s broken holotape as consolation. You didn’t get that to work yet did you.” A flash of a smile. “But you can throw a grown man across a room, and you know more about machines and technology than all of us put together. Even you, Gannon. I leave it for you to decide.”

"Hmm.. let me think about this one. Treated like the black sheep of the family, grubbing around for scrap metal... oooorrr... punching my fist clean through a centurion's skull. I'm kind of.. I don't know.. what do you think."

The courier leaned in. His face was one of concern. "I'm serious, Veronica."

She laid her hand on his hand. Her hand was so small, so white, like a porcelain doll's. "Me too, Mister Chris-- Marco."

He brought her little hand to his lips, and then he looked on to Boone. He took in a breath. “Craig, an officer has failed you. I will do my best to right that wrong. I swear before God that I will avenge your wife. I hope that you will learn to understand me in time and the decisions I have made. I am honored to serve with you.. I know right now you feel like you don't know if you have a purpose. This is your mission, Boone. When you go against Caesar.. he will discover which of you is truly favored by the God of War."

Boone looked away. Arcade saw an almost imperceptible swallow. "Don't get mushy on me, Mister Chris," he said.

After a moment, he added, "There's something I.. something I need to do here."

Marco leaned in to try to see his face. "What can we help you with?"

"Never had a funeral," Boone croaked. "Doesn't have to be.. just something."

Arcade felt stung. Of course they never held one. He thought that this would trouble Marco, and a look at his face confirmed his suspicion. "We could pile stones for a memorial," he said.

Marco reached out a mangled hand and touched it to Boone's arm. "We'll do that," he said. "We'll help you with the ceremony. She deserves it."


	23. Chapter 23

The classic myths taught you to respect any strangers encountered. You never knew who they really were. Arcade thinks of the poor hungry man who labored so hard to bring Julie Farkas that shipment of medicine. His trembling hands, his sad eyes, like some loyal old dog who got kicked.

It is hard to reconcile that pathetic old scarecrow with his wily centurion. Even crippled, Arcade doesn't doubt the man will bring down the Son of Mars. He'll find a way. Even if he can't fight all that well anymore, he'll find people who can. He has enough experience to know what to do, and he knows enough bullshit to get away with it.

Arcade tries to tell himself that he is making a mistake, but it is difficult to ignore Marco's advances. That's new. Arcade still thinks of his old friend shyly allowing himself to become his lover.

Now they lay together on the tired old mattress too short for Arcade. His long legs have kicked the sheets half-off their cooling bodies. Marco seemed to want to preserve as much contact as possible, nuzzled up along him.

With a lump in his throat, Arcade realizes how safe he must feel, how trusting. _He thinks he's got such power over me, too. It's like he knows how many times I watched gladiator holos as a boy.. good God, how Mom would cry.._

"I can't believe you stood face to face with Major Dhatri," Arcade remarks, after awhile.

Then he realizes that Marco may have fallen asleep, the way he holds his good arm crooked over his eyes, the way he takes in slow easy breathing. Then he speaks in a lazy voice of gentle sarcasm. "I don't want to think of Major Dhatri's face at this time."

Arcade runs his fingers along the arm that covers his eyes, and when he reaches Marco's hand, the man's mangled fingers try to touch him back.

"I'm serious," Arcade says. "You must have been terrified. I knew you didn't want to go into McCarran." Even now he feels a pang of sadness for that one soldier they couldn't save, the mauled one they drug back to camp.

Marco makes a hum of a sound. "I thought I might die. But I didn't. Mercury is good to me."

The patron of tricksters.. and messengers. He must really believe that.

"Did you ever.. go against them before? The NCR?"

"Several times. Skirmishes, mostly. Some of the Minotaurs and the Centaurs had fought against them before-- but Hell Hounds mostly cared about raiders and warlords in the waste. For a couple weeks, one young lieutenant and his brave little squad kept coming after us, hit-and-run. They were very inexperienced and the whole farce was irritating. We were minding our own business.. tired.. footsore.. we had this snotty cough that we seemed to be passing around amongst each other. Lieutenant Stones was the name."

"I don't know if I want to know what happened to Lieutenant Stones."

"Oh, we caught him. It turned out that he was the scrawniest mousiest female I have ever seen. Covered in freckles. She looked like a little girl dressing in her father's uniform. She put on a brave front, though, I'll give her that. She offered herself in exchange for the lives of her men."

"Now I really don't--"

"Oh yes you do. She begged me to use her how I saw fit, if I just let them go. So I let them go, and I did. I made her carry my ammo cans for me for a good two days' march. I gave her a good lecturing. Although I couldn't understand at the time why the Great Bear would send such a scrawny female to fight me, she was still an officer.. and a junior officer needs a good lecturing. I quite liked her, actually. She had potential. I hope she took my advice and didn't end up in a raider's bone pit."

Arcade sighs. "I can see you doing that.. but what about the Arizona Rangers? Somehow I don't think your story there would be quite as cute.. "

"No," Marco admits. "No. We drove them out. I personally put an end to the seige at Yuma. We, my unit, we were headed through that way when Caesar redirected us. The frumentaria Silva helped us gain entry to the compound with their own uniforms and gas masks. It only bought us a few minutes, but they were tired by then. Struggling. I told Captain Garcia to surrender his men, but he told me he would rather die a free man than live a legion dog. He killed himself. Many of his men believed the same. Others escaped. I did not try hard to find them."

After a moment of slowly breathing in the dark, Marco says, "Rufus was very troubled over our orders. He didn't want to fight civilized people. But those were our orders. I tried to tell myself that another Caesar once demanded his soldiers fight Neptune, and the centurion brought back seashells for the spoils of war. My Caesar wanted the rangers at Yuma dead. So I brought back Garcia's sword."

Arcade says nothing. He wonders if he has gone too deep. If his judgment is clouded. He thinks: if Marco had not killed them, others would have, and it would have been worse. Then he thinks: Is this it, then? Is this what losing your mind feels like?

He senses there is more.

Marco turns toward him in the dark. "Few of us ever wanted to fight civilized people, beyond curiosity of course. We would march out so far that they hadn't really heard of us. We weren't there to conquer any of their land. The few occasions we came across other people it was quite pleasant to sit and buy cold drinks in the awning of a rest stop somewhere. It was easier when we had a profligate convert who could show us how to blend in, without castrating yourself trying to zip up a pair of jeans. I remember Scintillus once tried to bustle into a taphouse while wearing a woman's skirt."

Arcade tries not to smirk.

"I once thought that perhaps Caesar just didn't know there were others out there-- like us-- who were trying to tame the wilderness."

"You were wrong. He knew damn well."

"He's a brilliant man, Arcade. He did make Arizona safe. I wish that he could have used that brilliance for good.. he was a father to us all. He always had a solution. But--"

"But he's a petulant, self-important psychopath? The Followers of the Apocalypse told us all how cruel and strange he was, even back then." No man is a prophet in his own land.

Marco leans closer to touch their foreheads together. "I'm sorry. The more I say.. I upset you."

"No. It.. helps me understand you. Better. I think this mission will be good for you. That.. ah. That it will help you atone." When the word is already out of his mouth, Arcade thinks back on it, and winces. "Your personal quest for atonement. You seem like you want to make up for it." As do I.

The centurion nods without reply, his moving head making a soft sound against the bedsheet. The man who learned something of mercy and redemption while in the care of the Mormons.

Arcade looked into his eyes. "I finished your book, by the way," he says.

"What did you think?"

"I think I see why Lord of the Flies got to you," he says slowly. "A strange cult. Cruel violence. Chaos. Superstitious little boys, really.. and then the shock of finding a real civilization, and the shame of realizing how terrible you had been."

In the dim light, a slow smile showed on Marco's face. "I should have known you would understand."

Arcade tries to keep his voice neutral, and he can't tell if he succeeds. "You must have found something of the Enclave. That's why you have this attachment to them, well. To the idea. It looks like a competent civilization in comparison to Caesar's little dress-up party."

"Yes."

He wonders if Marco can feel how quickly his heart beats. One of the mangled hands is being touched to his face, his neck. Arcade can't make a decision. "You know that the Enclave.. they were all the people who locked themselves safe.. and let everyone else die."

"No matter if that is true. They kept the knowledge alive. There could have been doctors.. engineers.. electricians."

The fingers come close to his lips, and Arcade brushes a kiss into the wounded palm. _I can't.. I can't, not yet._ "They're all gone."

"May the gods have mercy on their souls. And our own."


	24. Chapter 24

Craig Boone was seen bright and early the next morning standing barefoot in the doorway of his motel room. He was scrubbing dirt off his boots with a boot-brush. Even so shortly after dawn, he had worked up something of a sweat. Beyond him, the motel room was reduced to orderly edges and shapes, as clean as any room could hope for in the Dino Deelite.

He continued to scrub dirt off his boots with the boot-brush, even as ED-E hovered very close and seemed to stare him straight in the eye.

It beeped for his attention.

Boone bent to set his boots neatly by his door. Then he stood straight, grabbed ED-E by an antenna, and began to boot-brush its faceplate.

...

She was dead. She was never coming back.

That room would never be their home again. He was going to store his belongings in a box beneath Manny's bed. Some other person, maybe some new couple, was going to come in and live in that room. There were a lot of people passing through Novac these days.

Hurt. Hurt a hell of a lot. Instead of a bleak and overwhelming pain that came from all sides, it was focused now. It was a thin and concentrated beam, like a beam of light. He was going to kill Caesar. It was his mission.

If anyone could make that possible, it was the courier. He had his own score to settle. Boone had already figured the man for an Arizona ranger. Now he knew. The marks on his hands, his feet. He could never go back, not after the Legion took Yuma.

Marco had the beginning of a plan. Plenty of crazy ideas along the way. Sure as they'd walked Cook-Cook to the gates of McCarran, they would take Caesar to the gates of hell.

...

 

Ranger Andy led the service. He read from a yellowed Bible that had survived the apocalypse in the bedside drawer of a top floor motel room.

Doctor Strauss came loping up a quarter way through it, squinting against the sun, her face screwed up like she was trying to figure out why everyone was gathered.

Cliff Briscoe was in his best suit, some dove gray suit the pests hadn't eaten too much of.

McBride showed his face, but no Alice. Figured.

The youngest Vargas nephew was leaning against his leg. His hand was so little that he could only get it around half of Boone's fingers.

No-Bark Noonan stood with his hat in both hands. He was dressed in his finest. Tears glimmered in his eyes. "Real sad Miss Carla's gone. Just ain't the same without her causing a ruckus all the time. Swore like a cattlehand, sang like cold fingers goin' up your back. Don't even mind she were a witch; darned up my socks for me good as new. Still don't got any holes in the one."

They all went around in some awkward way to say something nice about the deceased, or to tell some memory. People tried to be nice for him. He'd kept them safe.

Mostly they talked around her, though. Said she meant a lot to him, he'd have made a good father. She clearly loved him.

Manny tried. It was as best as Boone could expect. Vargas never wanted her dead. Just never wanted her. Never trusted her. Kept trying to tell him that she'd been married before, that she had a past.

So was all Boone said to that.

One time Alice McBride had lost her temper with Carla. It could happen to people who didn't know how she was. Alice said _out here in the wasteland we live simple-- we work for a living, and it's hard work, but it's honest work, not like that filth we heard you were in-- I wonder what your husband has to say about that._

Carla usually had a smart remark for everything, but that shut her up good.

Boone had just said, _Why sleep with an amateur when you could sleep with a professional._

Alice had turned white as the laundry they were hanging out. Hadn't known he had just come up on the other side of the clothes line.

Maybe it was Daisy Whitman who had the best thing to say. Always kind of liked Daisy. Couldn't put his finger on it, but she reminded him of some of the fun girls he'd known just joining up with the NCR. Tough but free spirited.

"Carla had a rough life, one she never wanted for her new family. She was trying to start over.. and I think she got to a rocky start in our town. Now we all remember her fiery spirit, but also recall she was betrayed by one of our own."

Cliff Briscoe broke in with a, "That's not how we treat others in Novac."

Daisy nodded. "Poor gal. She was trying to find her way, and I know she loved you, Craig. I know it hurts to lose someone.. but they never really go away, not if you remember them."

...

There needed to be a burial. A burning. Something. Marco asked him to consider burning something of hers so she could have it in the afterlife. Marco had nearly been killed more than any other man he knew, so maybe he knew more about how that all worked.

So he unfolded one of Carla's dresses, the one with the cut up the side, and he dipped it into the flames. Even the sight of the dress was a stab in the heart, but watching it catch fire, he knew he would never come across it in his things again. Marco threw in a bottlecap. Maybe that is what they did where he was from. He always felt bad about Carla. Like he could have done anything to stop it.

Boone threw in her high heels after that. He had her earrings in a pocket, her gold loop earrings. He almost threw them in-- but for some reason it was too much. He couldn't melt them.

The last offering was a sweatstained note he carried close to his heart. It burnt quick.

 _Goodbye, baby. Be seeing you. But not yet._


	25. Chapter 25

A fire in the desert blew smoke sideways as the patrol came humping up the road. A mangy roadrunner stood beak-open on the edge of cracked asphalt. Mid-molt or sick, hard to tell. Sgt Castillo started to draw a bead on it before it dashed off into a cactus patch.

Lt O'Donnell said, "We're coming up now on Novac. For the two of you who are new, there’s a sniper nest up in the dinosaur’s mouth. Sometimes a First Recon man. Manny Vargas. He fought the Legion at Boulder City. You might see Craig Boone around sometimes.”

The two of them weren't from around here, one from Shady Sands and the other from New Reno. They didn't know of Sgt Boone, not yet, not beyond the rumors from McCarran.

"We check in at Novac for water and updates. The sniper can see farther than we can, and sometimes he'll have something to pass along to us. We used to encounter feral ghouls down the road from here, but that's cleared up recently. Still, keep an eye out. We've had nightkin come through here, and even Legionaries snuck in by the dark of night."

"Hey sir, uh, looks like they're burning something," Cullough said around grubby binoculars.

Sgt Castillo snorted. "Jesus Christ, private, you are a genius. I wouldn't have known from all the smoke."

"A woman's dress, sir."

A small gathering came into view. Some of the folks dressed up as nice as they could. Ranger Andy reading from a book.

"Looks like some kind of a funeral ceremony," O'Donnell said. "I guess-- shit. That's his wife's dress."

"Legion sons of bitches," Castillo hissed.

O'Donnell smiled sadly. "You boys are probably too young, but there was a lady living in Novac who'd been known as a singer about ten years ago. Baranski, you're from New Reno, you might've heard of her."

Castillo snorted. "Ten years ago, Baranski was filling his diaper. Too young, too bad. He wouldn't have heard about the great _Esperanza_."

"When I first took this patrol, I thought the old lieutenant was pulling my leg." O'Donnell shook his head. "But we came up there that first day and there she was, hanging out one of Sgt Boone's shirts. A damned shame what happened to her."

A rare smile flickered over Sgt Castillo's scarred face. He had taken that scar from a machete four years ago. The woman Carla Dreckenstein had been one of the few entertainers who had the brass enough to come out to throw the NCR a show. No matter what people thought of her, here or there, or at Novac, where she had been Craig Boone's soiled dove, she had a fierce admiration for the soldiers. She had been a tough old girl. If she wanted to marry a man over a decade her junior.. well, she could do whatever she damn well wanted to, far as O'Donnell was concerned.

"She's in a better place now," Castillo said with reverence. "If I was that balding fat fuck I would be shaking in my skirt right now. The wrath of God coming right at him."

O'Donnell nodded. "Amen."

Then Castillo's face turned to thunder, and O'Donnell had to look on to suppress a smirk. There was the crusty old sergeant he knew. "All right, ladies, let's stop dragging our feet. I don't think LT wants us all to mince round the road all damn day. While you take a powder at the Dino Deelite, I'm going to ask Craig Boone how in the hell they got Cook-Cook to stroll right into McCarran. Jesus Christ, and he's _retired!_ What are we getting paid for!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for coming this far. I hope you've had as much fun as I had. I'd like to thank everyone for their comments and interest. Looking back, there's some things I would change, but I feel like I've made progress and this whole thing has been enjoyable for you. I'd also like to thank whoever originally made up "Murder Machine" because that is fantastic, the person who requested that "Child of Caesar" story, and the person who stumbled onto the idea that Boone and Veronica would really get along with each other. That's great. If there's anything in here that you liked, go have fun with it! I insist.
> 
> Things to do now:
> 
> You could go and start on the next installment called _Cry Havoc_ which you will see if you click on my name.
> 
> You could write your own legion story! There's plenty of people asking for fills, too, over on that other place. Try it, you'll have fun.


End file.
